JPMorgan Chase Finally Admits What Everyone Suspected: They Gave Trump’s Accounts the Boot After Jan. 6
In a courtroom plot twist that’s been five years in the making, JPMorgan Chase has quietly confessed in legal papers this week that yes, it did close President Donald Trump’s personal and business accounts back in February 2021, mere weeks after the January 6 Capitol events turned American politics into a contact sport.
The nation’s largest bank, led by the unflappable Jamie Dimon, had long danced around the question with the grace of a politician avoiding taxes—citing vague privacy rules and hypothetical policies. Now, in a filing responding to Trump’s $5 billion lawsuit, former chief administrative officer Dan Wilkening put it in black and white: certain accounts in the private and commercial banking divisions got the termination notice.
The impact? For a man whose brand is built on never being ordinary, suddenly scrambling to find new bankers must have felt like showing up to a black-tie gala in golf attire.
Businesses don’t run smoothly when the checks bounce metaphorically, and Trump’s lawyers claim the move inflicted serious financial bruises while landing him on some shadowy industry “blacklist” that makes opening new accounts about as easy as getting a quiet table at Mar-a-Lago during peak season. Meanwhile, the broader debate over “debanking” has conservatives clutching their pearls, arguing banks are playing politics with people’s money.
The saga began when Trump filed suit in Florida state court late last month, accusing JPMorgan of trade libel and unfair practices driven by political bias. He even claimed he personally raised the alarm with Dimon, who promised to look into it—only for the follow-up call to vanish like a bad tweet.
JPMorgan’s response? No comment beyond the paperwork, though the bank insists the suit lacks merit and is pushing hard to relocate the case to federal court in New York, where the accounts lived and where Trump once parked most of his empire. They also question the mysterious “blacklist,” promising a reply once Trump’s team actually defines it—because nothing says “we’re serious” like demanding footnotes on conspiracy-adjacent terms.
Trump’s camp, naturally, declared victory. They called the admission a “devastating concession” proving unlawful, intentional debanking that harmed the president, his family, and his companies. The president, they say, is fighting not just for himself but for everyone who’s ever been shown the vault door for their views.
Debanking itself has evolved from obscure banking jargon into a full-blown culture-war flashpoint. Conservatives still reference the Obama-era “Operation Choke Point” that squeezed gun shops and payday lenders, while Trump-era regulators have since cracked down on using “reputational risk” as an excuse to cut ties. In this latest chapter, the only thing clearer than the bank’s admission is that the checks—and the lawsuits—are still clearing slowly.
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