Biden admin weaponized banks against political opponents, congressional report reveals
A report published last week by the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government details how the Biden-Harris administration used the banking system against its political opponents.
Suspicious activity reports
Under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), banks are required to assist the federal government in tracking and reporting money laundering. That includes filing suspicious activity reports (SARs), which notify the government that the bank has flagged a transaction or customer as suspicious. SARs are submitted to the Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCen), which then distributes the data among relevant government and law enforcement authorities. Last year, FinCen received over 4.6 million SARs, most of which were not for money laundering or terrorist financing concerns.
Banks submit SARs for a number of reasons, such as high transaction amounts, large cash withdrawals, or wire transactions from high-risk countries. Often the concern is about the source of funds or a “transaction with no apparent economic, business or lawful purpose.” SARs are different from currency transaction reports (CTRs), which are submitted when a customer transacts over $10,000 a day. That threshold was established 50 years ago.
There is no legal process for SARs. Most of the time, customers are not notified that a SAR was filed concerning them — often they simply receive a notice that their account is being closed. Even if they contact the bank to find out why, representatives may not disclose that a SAR has been filed, as banks are not legally required to reveal that information.
Political enemies targeted
The congressional report found that the FBI has been targeting its political enemies by “tipping off” banks about certain individuals or organizations. The banks then file a SAR, providing the FBI with private information it would otherwise have had to obtain through a warrant request.
The FBI made significant use of this tactic after January 6, 2021, encouraged by MUFG Bank. MUFG suggested FinCen use SARs to invoke the Patriot Act to gather financial information on thousands of conservative Americans for possible “domestic terrorism.” On its own volition, Bank of America provided FinCen with transaction data of customers that were in Washington, DC around January 6th.
At least 25,000 employees in 472 agencies across federal, state, and local governments have warrantless access to any SARs and currency transaction reports (CTRs) that are filed, which are housed in FinCen’s Query database. Officials ran over 3.3 million searches in the database in the last year alone.
‘All Americans should be disturbed’
The Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group (BSAAG), which advises the Treasury Department on issues related to the BSA, is currently drumming up more ways to increase surveillance on Americans. These include using AI technology, forcing customers to access their accounts via digital IDs, and strengthening the collusion between banks and federal agencies. BSAAG documents show the group is aware of the widespread opposition to digital IDs, which is why it has proposed that the federal government mandate digital IDs as an anti-money laundering measure.
“All Americans should be disturbed by how their financial data is collected, made accessible to, and searched by federal and state officials, including law enforcement and regulatory agencies,” says the report. “With the rise in e-commerce and the widespread adoption of cash alternatives like credit cards or peer-to-peer payment services, the future leaves very little financial activity beyond the purview of modern financial institutions or the government’s prying eyes. This is because, as a condition of participating in the modern economy, Americans are forced to disclose details of their private lives to a financial industry that has been too eager to pass this information along to federal law enforcement.”
“Federal law enforcement has shown that it will leverage any opportunity to operate outside the bounds of the statutes that govern access to Americans’ financial data,” the congressional subcommittee added. “Because the existence of a SAR and other BSA filings may never be revealed to a customer, Americans may never know the extent to which their finances are being tracked.”
Unchecked power
Collusion between financial institutions and the Biden-Harris administration to monitor and debank conservatives — including pro-life groups — has been a significant problem over the last four years. Last month, billionaire investor Marc Andreessen explained to podcast Joe Rogan how it works.
“There’s a constitutional amendment that says the government can’t restrict your speech, but there’s no constitutional amendment that says the government can’t debank you, right? And so, if they can’t do the one thing, they do the other thing,” Andreessen said. “And then they don’t have to debank you. They just have to put pressure on the private company banks to do it. And then the private company banks do it because they’re expected to. But the government gets to say, ‘We didn’t do it. It was the private company that did it.’”
“It’s this sleight of hand that happens . . . it’s a privatized sanctions regime that lets bureaucrats do to American citizens the same thing that we do to Iran, just kick you out of the financial system,” he added. “And so, this has been happening to all the crypto entrepreneurs in the last four years. This has been happening to a lot of the fintech entrepreneurs, anybody trying to start any kind of new banking service because they’re trying to protect the big banks.”
This provides the government and financial institutions with enormous power that bypasses the legal system entirely, leaving debanked customers with no recourse.
“None of this is written down,” Andreessen continued. “There’s no rules. There’s no court. There’s no decision process. There’s no appeal. Who do you appeal to, right? Like who do you go to to get your bank account back, right? And then there’s also the civil asset forfeiture side of it . . . that happens to people in a lot of places now who get arrested and all of a sudden the state takes their money . . . There will be some investigation into safe deposit boxes, and the next thing you know, the feds have seized all the contents of the safe deposit boxes, and that stuff never gets returned.”
