In January 2025, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, President Trump looked at Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan in front of the world and said: "I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives."
Bank of America's answer was that it "never close[s] accounts for political reasons" and has no political litmus test. Moynihan said his bank banks "everybody."
For years, that was the line from America's biggest banks. Debanking was a conspiracy theory, the banks were just making ordinary risk decisions, and the conservatives complaining about it were paranoid.
On October 14, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released what was in the banks' files.
The 47-page report, "Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans," was ordered under President Trump's Executive Order 14331. It found that all nine of the largest national banks the OCC supervises kept policies from 2020 through September 2025 that restricted services based on customers' political or religious beliefs. The nine are JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC Bank, TD Bank, and BMO Bank.
Together they hold $12.7 trillion, or 76% of all assets in the institutions the OCC regulates.
"Today's report provides irrefutable evidence that the nation's largest banks have denied, debanked and discriminated against customers and lawful businesses," said Comptroller Jonathan V. Gould.
Investigators reviewed nearly 100,000 complaints and about 50,000 internal documents, roughly 420,000 pages. They found a system running on vibes. The banks' "reputation risk" frameworks had no clear, measurable standards, so an account could be closed under political pressure without any financial-crime concern at all.
Bank of America, the bank that "never" closes accounts for political reasons, cut off private prison companies over "changing policymaker attitudes." A few months into Trump's second term, once the policymakers had changed, it tried to bring one back.
In 2022, Chase closed the account of former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback's National Committee for Religious Freedom three weeks after it opened. At the time, Chase said it "would never close an account due to one's political or religious affiliation." The report shows what JPMorgan's payment subsidiary, WePay, was doing in those same years.
WePay built a screening list that flagged "MAGA," "Make America Great," and "America First," and it shut down a merchant selling MAGA merchandise. An employee wrote down the reason: "MAGA and Trump-related items are part of it." WePay also closed a religious nonprofit after the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled it a "hate group," and closed an account raising money for a "devout Christian" in a legal fight over anti-discrimination laws.
During those same years, JPMorgan held on to a wealthy client facing drug and weapons charges. Regulators say the money that client brought in appeared to influence the decision.
The SPLC's labels show up again and again in the report. Banks used them to decide whom to drop. During the pandemic, one helped TD Bank deny a COVID emergency loan to a nonprofit that pushes for limits on immigration. In April, a federal grand jury indicted the SPLC on 11 counts, including four counts of making false statements to a federally insured bank.
PNC refused credit to a media company after noting that an owner's foundation "has funded several Christian conservative groups." Wells Fargo pressured a payment processor to drop a religious nonprofit over its position on same-sex marriage.
Then there are the guns. A Wells Fargo review warned that "under the Biden administration, banks could face greater supervisory pressure to move away from lending to the firearms industry," and Wells Fargo turned down the lawful gun businesses. Capital One rejected a gun-rights organization over "optics."
Entire industries were treated as untouchable: oil and gas exploration, coal mining, firearms and ammunition, detention facilities, tobacco and e-cigarettes, and digital assets. All six are legal, and every bank that shunned them exists because the federal government charters and insures it.
The banks' defenders will point to Capital One turning away a pro-abortion group as outside its "risk appetite." A risk employee noted that the group's political giving was "about 95% Democrat." That note shows the banks were tracking customers' party donations. The rest of the report shows who paid the price: Trump supporters, Christians, gun owners, and energy workers.
All nine banks now claim they've reformed. The OCC found some just "rebranded the risk as a 'franchise' or 'brand' risk," and that "no bank has fully and publicly acknowledged its past debanking decisions." Gould said he is "not confident" the banks' changes will be enough.
JPMorgan's response dismissed the findings as "a limited number of historical interactions." Then it agreed with the administration that "years of operating in a regulatory environment that often second-guessed decisions contributed to a culture of caution."
The regulators doing that second-guessing worked for Joe Biden. And it was JPMorgan's own subsidiary that built a screening list treating the word "MAGA" as a threat.
Acting CFPB Director Mark Paoletta put Biden's name on it. "It is appalling that these banks targeted American consumers for their political, social, or religious beliefs that did not align with the Biden Administration or its leftist allies," he said. "These thuggish tactics, which were also a defining feature of the Biden-Chopra CFPB, have no place in America." His bureau has opened its own investigation.
Trump knows this firsthand. Banks cut off his own family after January 6, and he's suing JPMorgan over it. His administration has stripped "reputation risk" out of federal bank examinations, barred regulators from pressuring banks to drop customers over it, and made debanking count against banks when they apply for licenses and in their community-lending ratings. Penalties haven't been announced — yet.
"Americans should have access to financial services regardless of their beliefs, affiliations or political views," Gould said.
If one of these banks closed your account or turned you down, you can file a complaint with the OCC at HelpWithMyBank.gov or by calling 800-613-6743, and with the CFPB at consumerfinance.gov/complaint.
The banks said conservatives were imagining it. Now there are 420,000 pages of the banks' own documents showing they were right.
