A federal banking regulator found major U.S. banks closed accounts and denied financing to conservatives and Christian groups, citing politics, religion, and Biden-era pressure.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released a report this week documenting how the nation’s largest banks shut out lawful customers over political views and religious beliefs. Comptroller Jonathan Gould said the findings leave little room for spin.
“Today’s report provides irrefutable evidence that the nation’s largest banks have denied, debanked and discriminated against customers and lawful businesses,” Gould said in a statement covered by Breitbart News.
President Donald Trump ordered the investigation as part of an effort to end politically motivated debanking. The review ran from 2020 through September 2025 and covered nine national banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, PNC, Capital One, TD Bank, BMO, and U.S. Bank. Examiners went through nearly 100,000 complaints, hundreds of individual decisions, and about 420,000 pages of bank records.
All nine banks kept policies that restricted services or demanded heightened scrutiny based on “reputation risk” or industry category. In plain terms, bankers weighed public opinion, activist pressure, and political heat, not just credit risk, when deciding who got to keep an account or a loan.
JPMorgan Chase’s Silicon Valley payment firm WePay, acquired in 2017, appears repeatedly in the findings. In February 2021, WePay closed a merchant account selling Trump merchandise after deciding the products promoted hate, violence, or racial intolerance. An employee cited “MAGA and Trump-related items” among the violations.
Internal screening lists flagged terms such as “MAGA,” “Make America Great,” and “America First.” WePay also closed accounts tied to an event organizer, a religious nonprofit, and fundraising for a legal challenge by a devout Christian to certain anti-discrimination laws. That July 2021 case went up to JPMorgan reputation-risk staff.
One internal description labeled a nonprofit a “[r]ight wing religious conservative non profit with strong anti LGBTQ rhetoric.” From 2021 to 2023, JPMorgan repeatedly declined commercial services to a conservative retailer. Years later, employees edited internal records to strip out labels like “right-wing” and “extreme clients.”
A JPMorgan spokesperson told the New York Post the firm identified the WePay problem, corrected it, and that the business no longer operates. The bank said its policies prohibit discrimination based on political or religious views. JPMorgan also rescinded a prohibition on financing small firearms manufacturers in 2025.
"We identified it, corrected it, and the business no longer operates."
To Bloomberg, the bank added that years of second-guessing by regulators fed a culture of caution across the industry and that the system needs fixing.
PNC declined a credit line to a media company in late 2021 after employees pointed to the owners’ conservative views and public affiliations. A relationship manager had described the company as growing and performing without flagging specific credit problems under review. One employee wrote the quiet part out loud.
"I think it becomes really difficult to justify aligning ourselves with a company whose owners have built very public personas around opinions very contrary to PNC’s beliefs/values."
Wells Fargo pressed a payment intermediary to rethink serving a religious nonprofit and supplied material about the group’s views on same-sex marriage. Staff pointed to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, and BloodMoney.org as resources while saying the bank endorsed no specific one. The intermediary terminated the relationship, later offered reinstatement, and the nonprofit declined.
In 2024, Wells Fargo employees reviewing a prospective firearms customer put Biden-era politics on paper.
"Under the Biden administration, banks could face greater supervisory pressure to move away from lending to the firearms industry."
Opportunities were declined. A card network also sent Wells Fargo a list of about 60 potentially problematic merchants after a highly publicized political event.
National Review reported the OCC’s 47-page review names the same nine banks and details WePay’s merchant closures alongside broader findings that conservatives, religious organizations, and lawful businesses lost access over beliefs or activities.
The report separates two patterns. JPMorgan Chase, PNC, Wells Fargo, and Capital One show completed denials or closures tied to political or religious views. Citibank and Bank of America cases more often track industry restrictions and other reputation-risk calls.
Restricted categories included Arctic oil and gas, coal mining and coal-fired power, firearms and ammunition, private prisons and detention facilities, tobacco and e-cigarettes, and digital assets.
Capital One treated partisan activity as high reputation risk and rejected groups across the spectrum, including abortion-rights organizations, a public-education group whose political arm backed Democrats, and a gun-rights group. TD Bank prepared to reject an anti-immigration nonprofit’s second Paycheck Protection Program application over a conflict with bank values and an SPLC designation; the nonprofit withdrew as ineligible. TD also flagged pro-life and faith-based organizations.
Bank of America wound down private-prison relationships. A senior public policy leader later explained the exit by citing risks from “changing policymaker attitudes.” In 2025, after Trump returned to office, the bank sought to restore a relationship even though the reputation-risk factors had not materially changed. Citibank declined financing for a coal-dependent electricity provider and refused an IPO tied to a firearms business that failed internal gun-sales standards. In June 2025, Citibank said it would drop its firearms policy and bar discrimination based on political affiliation in its employee code and financial-access rules.
BMO required a firearms-related customer to keep tactical-product sales under 30 percent of total sales and called for transitioning customers out if they refused the standards. U.S. Bank closed an aviation company’s accounts after finding an old report alleging participation in a controversial government program.
The OCC said banks should use measurable, impartial, risk-based standards set in advance. Instead, many leaned on subjective reads of public opinion. Reliance on advocacy groups and other nontraditional sources added more room for bias. The agency also flagged card networks as catalysts for some bank probes and suggested other regulators may want a closer look at those rules.
Federal supervisors have already moved to pull politics out of bank exams. In April, the OCC and FDIC finalized a rule barring supervisory criticism based on reputation risk and barring pressure to deny services over protected beliefs or lawful but disfavored activities. The Federal Reserve announced in June 2025 that it would remove reputation risk from examinations.
OCC guidance in September 2025 says the agency will weigh politicized or unlawful debanking when it reviews licensing applications and rates banks under the Community Reinvestment Act. A December 2025 public approval of PNC’s acquisition of FirstBank included fair-access language: restrictions must rest on individualized, objective, risk-based analysis rather than environmental, social-impact, or reputation-risk judgments first.
The report itself announced no bank-specific enforcement penalties. The OCC is considering more rules, folding debanking records into merger and community-lending reviews, easing paths for customers to obtain confidential supervisory information for private suits, and encouraging private legal action where warranted.
Separately on Wednesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said it would investigate compliance with federal consumer financial laws and address consumer harm from the practices. Acting Director Mark Paoletta did not mince words.
"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."
The Bank Policy Institute said the industry supports fair access and clear standards that keep risk management sound while blocking unfair treatment over political or religious beliefs. Banks pointed reporters to that statement.
"The banking industry supports fair access to banking services and has been working to ensure that government regulations and policies enable banks to serve law-abiding customers."
RealClearPolitics framed the OCC findings as documentation of political debanking, with large banks cast as willing or unwitting partners in a wider cancel-culture push that hit MAGA-aligned customers and other targets of the left.
S1 notes that a grand jury earlier this year indicted the SPLC on fraud charges alleging the group told donors and banks it was fighting racist and extremist organizations while routing money to confidential informants tied to violent and extremist activity. Bank files still show employees treating SPLC designations as useful inputs.
When banks treat faith, firearms, energy, and dissenting speech as contaminants, they stop acting like neutral utilities and start acting like political gatekeepers, and taxpayers and lawful customers are the ones locked out.
