(DailyChive.com) – Thirteen banks are facing scrutiny from Republican lawmakers for allegedly spying on Trump supporters in the aftermath of January 6 events.
The federal government urged banks to flag transactions that mention some specific terms like “MAGA” and “Trump” as they tried to find “extremism indicators” involved in Capitol Hill chaos.
In one specific instance, the Bank of America handed over information about 211 individuals to the government who met the threshold of extremism set by the federal government.
According to the House Judiciary Committee, transactions that mentioned “religious texts” were also flagged as part of the federal government’s effort to curb what they called extremism.
Some top banks, including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, U.S. Bank, Chase, and Truist, were already facing investigation for their collusion with the FBI and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
Now, seven more financial institutions, including HSBC, Standard Chartered, Western Union, PayPal, Charles Schwab, Santander, and MUFG, are being scrutinized for their role in the whole plot of spying on Americans’ personal information without any warrant.
The House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government wrote a letter to all thirteen troubling financial firms, stating that Congress wants to know the extent to which the banks spied on the privacy of Americans and marked their political and religious affiliations as “suspicious” and extremist. The subcommittee asked the institutions to provide the documents related to this spying and their communication with the federal government about this issue.
In a separate letter to the U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan, wrote that this approach of spying on Americans without any warrant disrespects the civil liberties of citizens.
Meanwhile, Yellen acknowledged that the federal government communicated with the financial institutions, although she stated that she was not aware of it.
Yellen noted that this is one of the methods the federal government may have used to narrow down its search for individuals who participated in the January 6 attacks.
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