JPMorgan concedes it closed Trump’s accounts after Jan. 6 attack

Banking giant JPMorgan Chase acknowledged for the first time that it closed the accounts of President Donald Trump and several of his businesses in the political and legal aftermath of the January 6, 2021 attacks on the U.S. Capitol.

The disclosure marks the latest development in a legal saga over Trump’s alleged “debanking” after the president sued America’s largest bank for $5 billion alleging his accounts were closed for political reasons.

The acknowledgment came in a court filing submitted this week in Trump's lawsuit against the bank and its CEO Jamie Dimon.

“In February 2021, JPMorgan informed Plaintiffs that certain accounts maintained with JPMorgan’s CB and PB would be closed,” JPMorgan's former chief administrative officer Dan Wilkening wrote in the court filing. The “PB” and “CB” stands for JPMorgan's private bank and commercial bank.

In a letter to Trump submitted to the court Friday, dated February 19, 2021, the bank said it was recommending that he “find a more suitable institution with which to conduct business.”

“With that in mind, this letter is to respectfully inform you that we will need to end our current relationship,” the letter to Trump said.

Until now, JPMorgan has never admitted it closed the president's accounts, and would only speak hypothetically about when the bank closes accounts and its reasons for doing so.

In a previous statement, the bank said it “does not close accounts for political or religious reasons” but does so when accounts “create legal or regulatory risk for the company.”

Trump initially sued JPMorgan in state court in Florida, where Trump has his primary residence at his Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach. JPMorgan Chase is seeking to move the case to federal court in New York, which is where the bank accounts were located and where Trump kept much of his business operations until recently.

Trump accuses the bank of trade libel and accuses Dimon himself of violating Florida’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

In the original lawsuit, Trump alleges he tried to raise the issue personally with Dimon after the bank started to close his accounts, and that Dimon assured Trump he would figure out what was happening. The lawsuit alleges Dimon failed to follow up with Trump.

Further, Trump’s lawyers allege that JPMorgan placed the president and his companies on a reputational “blacklist” that both JPMorgan and other banks use to keep clients from opening accounts with them in the future.

JPMorgan previously said it believes the suit has no merit.

“Debanking” occurs when a bank closes the accounts of a customer or refuses to do business with a customer in the form of loans or other services. Once a relatively obscure issue in finance, debanking has become a politically charged issue in recent years, with right-wing figures arguing that banks have discriminated against them and their affiliated interests.