JPMorgan's internal system flagged the words America First as a hate violation.
A new federal report just confirmed it happened at nine of America's biggest banks.
And the banks didn't build that blacklist alone.
How JPMorgan Debanked MAGA Customers for Buying Trump Merchandise
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency spent months reviewing nearly 100,000 complaints and 420,000 pages of internal bank documents.
The 47-page report found that JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC, TD Bank, and BMO all denied service to Americans based on their
JPMorgan's payment arm, WePay, programmed its internal system to flag terms like "MAGA," "Make America Great," and "America First" whenever they appeared in a merchant's account – and bank employees added those terms to the watchlist after January 6, 2021.
WePay closed the account of one merchant selling MAGA merchandise, claiming the products promoted "hate, violence, or racial intolerance."
A second Trump merchandise seller lost his account too – his flagged inventory included a "Biden-Illegitimate-Tshirt," a "The-Big-Lie-Sticker," and a "Trump-Won" flag.
A Trump flag was enough to lose your bank account.
A TD Bank employee reviewed a Christian health care sharing ministry and flagged its "moral and religious requirements" as conflicting with the bank's "values of diversity and inclusion."
Wells Fargo cut off a religious nonprofit that held traditional views on marriage.
Gun dealers, coal companies, and oil and gas firms got cut off at every major American bank.
The SPLC Was Deciding Who Got Debanked and Now Faces Federal Charges
The banks had an accomplice.
They relied on "hate group" labels from the Southern Poverty Law Center to decide which Christians and conservatives got debanked.
A JPMorgan employee shut down a religious organization's account specifically because the SPLC had designated it an "extremist hate group."
PNC killed a media company's credit line because its owner had funded Christian conservative groups that the SPLC had labeled hate organizations.
The SPLC was the shadow regulator of American banking.
That same organization was indicted in April 2026 on 11 counts, including wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The DOJ found the SPLC had been opening fake bank accounts to hide payments it made to informants inside extremist groups, including members of the KKK, from 2014 to 2023.
FBI Director Kash Patel had already labeled the group a "partisan smear machine."
America's nine largest banks handed a now-indicted criminal organization the power to decide which Americans could access their own money.
Biden Turned Operation Choke Point Into a Weapon Against Conservatives
This didn't start with Biden.
Obama's Justice Department launched Operation Choke Point in 2013, pressuring banks to cut ties with gun dealers, payday lenders, and industries Democrats found politically inconvenient.
Trump shut it down, and Biden brought it back as Operation Choke Point 2.0 – this time targeting crypto firms, churches, and conservative media.
Trump is currently suing JPMorgan for $5 billion over the bank's decision to close his accounts after January 6, and Melania, Eric, and Barron Trump say they were debanked at the same time.
Regulators don't have to pass a law to destroy an industry.
They just signal to banks that certain customers create "reputation risk" – a deliberately vague phrase that lets unelected bureaucrats blacklist livelihoods without a single vote.
Banks comply out of fear and close accounts quietly, never telling customers why.
Trump's August 2025 executive order directed federal regulators to investigate and end the practice.
Now the OCC is threatening to refer banks to the Attorney General for unlawful debanking and may penalize them in their Community Reinvestment Act ratings.
The CFPB is launching a formal investigation, and the OCC said it cannot confirm the banks' claimed reforms will actually hold.
Florida Senator Rick Scott called the report proof of "what we knew all along" – that the Biden administration weaponized the federal government against conservatives and pressured private companies to do the same.
Banks that outsourced their blacklist to a federally indicted criminal organization don't get to plead ignorance.
They deserve subpoenas.
Sources:
- Brecca Stoll, "Biden Administration Pushed Banks To Target Conservative And Religious Groups, Report Finds," The Daily Wire, October 14, 2026.
- Miranda Devine, "Major banks closed accounts of MAGA, pro-life and other conservative groups disfavored by Biden admin: bombshell report," New York Post, October 14, 2026.
- Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, "Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans," October 14, 2026.
- "Trump Ends Obama's Operation Choke Point," Washington Examiner, August 16, 2017.
