OPINION:
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency found, in a just-released 47-page examination of nine of the nation’s largest banks, that these financial institutions discriminated in thousands of instances against clients and would-be clients with Christian, MAGA and conservative views.
This is how Marxists dig their claws into a society: They use whatever systems available to root out and destroy those with beliefs that counter the government narrative. Notably, this is how today’s Democrats operate as well.
“The OCC said all nine banks maintained policies during that period [2020 through September 2025] that could influence employees to deny or limit financial services because of customers’ political or religious beefs of lawful business activities,” The Dallas Express wrote.
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It reminds of how Eric H. Holder Jr., the U.S. attorney general-slash-self-described-wingman of President Obama days, executed a similar action that led to the debanking of lawful firearms dealers. They called it Operation Choke Point. They should have called it Government Gets Your Guns.
Thank goodness for President Trump — else the feds, under a Democrat administration and in cahoots with the banking industry, would have silenced over the last few years anyone and everyone who didn’t fall in line with the socialist-communist ways of the left.
Here’s what was just revealed: The OCC report, called “Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans,” discovered that JPMorgan Chase Bank, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo Bank, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC Bank, TD Bank and BMO Bank “maintained policies or engaged in practices that denied or restricted financial access on the basis of Americans’ political or religious beliefs or a customer’s otherwise lawful business activities,” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wrote.
The OCC had emails.
The OCC had bank documents.
The OCC had correspondences and written policies and the like — all showing the bias was strategic and purposeful, and in some cases, moved from the paper policy into actual act.
The businesses that were most commonly affected included entire sectors: firearms, oil and gas, tobacco.
“It is appalling that these banks targeted American consumers for their political, social or religious beliefs that did not align with the Biden administration or its leftist allies,” said CFPB’s acting director, Mark Paoletta.
“Many of those targeted were supporters of President Trump,” Paoletta said.
“These thuggish tactics, which were also a defining feature of the Biden-Chopra CFPB, have no place in America,” Paoletta said. Rohit Chopra was the director of CFPB under then-President Biden; interestingly, California Gov. Gavin Newsom in May appointed Chopra to head up the state’s new Business and Consumer Services Agency.
Trump in August of 2025 had signed an executive order, “Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans,” to uncover what he described as financial institutions’ “unacceptable practices” that discriminated against certain lawful businesses. The OCC’s report is an outcome of this executive order.
And one example of OCC’s finding: WePay, a payment processing venture owned by JPMorgan Chase, used internal screening politics to find merchants with customer profiles and websites that contained words like “MAGA,” or “Make America Great Again,” or “America First.” In some instances, the OCC found, WePay actually closed accounts of customers affiliated with these choice phrases.
In February 2021, WePay shut down the account of a client who sold Trump and MAGA gear “after determining that the merchandise promoted hate, violence or racial intolerance,” the Dallas Express wrote.
In September 2021, WePay closed the account of another merchant, this time for selling internally flagged “‘conservative/republican T-shirts, hats, etc,’” the Dallas Express wrote.
In July 2021, WePay closed an account for a nonprofit organization seen as right-wing, religious and conservative.
There were more — many more instances uncovered by the OCC of financial bias. The OCC actually reviewed 100,000 complaints and sifted through 50,000 documents as part of its investigation.
“[The] report provides irrefutable evidence that the nation’s largest banks have denied, debanked, and discriminated against customers and lawful businesses,” said Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould.
As such, the OCC is taking the next steps in holding these banks accountable. In Gould’s words: We’re “assessing further changes” “to reduce the likelihood of these harmful practices recurring in the future.”
One easy fix?
Don’t let Democrats hold the reins of power.
These things only occur when Democrats are in charge.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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