President Donald Trump sued Wall Street giant JP Morgan for $5 billion on Thursday, claiming in a Florida lawsuit that the company debanked him and his businesses for political reasons.
In the lawsuit, Trump’s attorneys claim JP Morgan Chase decided to close the president’s accounts in early 2021 “as a result of political and social motivations, and JPMC’s unsubstantiated, 'woke' beliefs that it needed to distance itself from President Trump and his conservative political views.”
A JP Morgan spokesperson did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.
The Trump family has long claimed that it was shut out of America’s top banks following the events of January 6, 2021, and the end of Trump’s first presidential term. They have also said those events were a key motivator behind the family’s eventual embrace of crypto as an alternative financial system with fewer gatekeepers.
President Trump’s first extensive comments on the subject of debanking came last June, in response to a question from Decrypt.
"If the Biden people order the banks to be virtually closed, they can do anything they want. The regulators control the banks,” Trump said. “It's not the president of the bank. The president of the bank is far less important to a bank than a regulator, and a regulator can put that bank out of business."
NEW: I just asked President Trump in the Oval Office whether he's planning on signing an executive order targeting debanking, which crypto leaders and the Trumps alike say negatively impacted them during the Biden admin.
Trump’s new lawsuit, however, puts blame squarely on the shoulders of JP Morgan’s leadership for declining to do business with the Trump family.
“The digital assets industry has […] been the unfair target of debanking initiatives,” the order said.
Debanking has long been a core issue uniting crypto advocates and the president’s family.
