On Monday, the Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee unveiled a broadened investigation into claims that major U.S. banks have voluntarily disclosed confidential customer financial information to the FBI, a practice purported to have occurred around the Capitol riot on January 6. Spearheading the probe, Representatives Massie and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) have directed letters to the chief executives of six leading financial conglomerates: JPMorgan Chase & Company, Citigroup, Truist Financial Corporation, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp, and PNC Financial Services.
According to The Blaze:
“The banks should not be conducting a dragnet for the FBI where every customer is a suspect, and if they are, we need to do something about it because it’s an end run around the Constitution,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) told TheBlaze in an interview Monday afternoon.
“Did the FBI wink and nod at the banks and say, ‘Well, we can’t ask you to give this to us, but if you voluntarily gave it to us, we can receive it?'” Massie said, adding that if such an action had in fact occurred, he would consider it to be “just more evidence of malfeasance at the FBI.”
“Just like with the Twitter censorship, if you have one company in a field doing it, probably the rest of them are as well,” Massie said. Massie emphasized that the letters were not based on a mere “hunch.” To the contrary, they were based on testimony from career FBI officials about Bank of America sharing customers’ financial information.
“[The FBI whistleblowers] have no reason to make this up. And so I think there is some there there. We need to find out what that is.”
The documents in question encapsulate the statements given by two informants from the FBI to the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. These informants revealed that the Bank of America willingly supplied the FBI with information on individuals who conducted transactions in the vicinity of D.C. within a three-day period surrounding the incident at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
