Donald Trump has sued JPMorgan Chase and its CEO, Jamie Dimon, over alleged “debanking” after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The president and his business entities are seeking at least $5 billion in civil damages, claiming the bank closed his accounts for “political and social motivations.”
“In essence, JPMC debanked Plaintiffs’ Accounts because it believed that the political tide at the moment favored doing so,” the lawsuit alleges.
The bank has rebutted Trump’s allegations, saying the lawsuit has no merit. In a statement, the bank said: “Our company does not close accounts for political or religious reasons. We do close accounts because they create legal or regulatory risk for the company.”
On Thursday’s “The 11th Hour,” MS NOW’s Stephanie Ruhle reacted to the new lawsuit.
“I worked in banking for a long time,” she said. “One of the core tenets, one of the most important regulations when you work in banking, is something known as ‘KYC’: Know your client. And if a bank cannot explicitly detail and explain who the client is, where they’re getting their money from, what the money is being used for, they are on the hook in a big, bad, nasty way.”
Ruhle said that in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack, “there was a lot of unclear information” and “nobody even knew where the money came from that funded it.”
But Ruhle said this lawsuit has nothing to do with the bank’s actions in 2021 and everything to do with Trump’s feelings about its CEO. “This isn’t about what JPMorgan did post-Jan. 6,” she said.
The “11th Hour” host noted that the president’s lawsuit came “just days after Dimon publicly criticized Trump’s policies on both immigration and the idea of capping credit card rates.” She also highlighted Dimon’s refusal to donate to the president’s East Wing renovations.
Ruhle said Dimon is “one of the few CEOs” who have been “outspoken” during Trump’s second term, since “he’s been complimentary but also critical of the president.”
She also said that that kind of public criticism of Trump and his policies from business leaders is hard to come by these days.
“Bloomberg has described [how] we have entered this era of self-censorship under Trump,” Ruhle said, adding: “So many of these CEOs I spoke to during the last election … they said they were being stifled by wokeness; in the age of DEI, they could not express themselves. “These same CEOs now are scurrying out of the Trump speech in Davos, saying, ‘I got to get to the toilet,’ because they’re unwilling to give an honest answer when they’re watching our president of the United States stand on a stage, spread lies and insult other countries.” Ruhle said it was “extraordinary” that people who pride themselves on being “outspoken leaders” could remain silent. “Cat got their tongue?” she asked. You can watch Ruhle’s full analysis in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. Recommended
