FIRST ON FOX: President Donald Trump and the White House are expected to sign an executive order Thursday to put an end to regulators and banks shutting down accounts, also known as debanking, for political reasons.
The executive order, exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital, aims to bring an end to debanking and political bias, driven by bank regulators, which the president says he has experienced first-hand.
Under the executive order, federal banking regulators will be required to remove reputational risk and equivalent concepts from guidance and examination manuals, and the Small Business Association will require financial institutions to make efforts to reinstate clients and potential clients previously denied services due to an unlawful debanking policy.
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“The banks discriminated against me very badly,” Trump told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this week. “They totally discriminate against – I think me maybe even more, but they discriminate against many conservatives.”
“I believe [the Biden administration] told the Banking Commission, the bankers [and] the banking regulators, to do everything you can to destroy Trump,” the president added. “And that’s what they did.”
The executive order also instructs federal banking regulators to review supervisory and complaint data for instances of unlawful debanking based on religion and refers such cases to the office of the attorney general, and directs regulators to review financial institutions for past or current policies promoting politicized debanking and issue fines, consent decrees and other remedial actions.
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Lastly, the executive order will require the secretary of Treasury to develop a strategy to combat debanking activities, including legislative and regulatory solutions.
Broad debanking regulatory language, enacted by former President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice in 2013, has allowed regulators to direct banks to shut down accounts for “reputational risk” and directed regulators to treat “negative public opinion” of account holders as heavily as a serious financial risk.
Sources on Wall Street explained to Fox News Digital that when a regulator speaks, whether couched as a rule, guidance or even a simple conversation, banks have little choice but to listen.
Trump told reporters in June that “the regulators control the banks” and when an administration instructs regulators to “go and make life impossible for big banks and little banks” that regulators “really control it.”
When an account is shut down by a bank, the account holder is typically not given a reason and provided a deadline for which to transfer their account balance to a different banking institution.
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Melania Trump said in her memoir that she too had her account closed after many years of banking with a specific banking institution and that Barron Trump was subsequently denied the creation of an account after the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
Big banks on Wall Street also praised the Trump administration’s executive order ahead of Thursday’s signing ceremony.
“We welcome the Trump administration’s efforts to provide regulatory clarity to banks,” a spokesperson for Bank of America told Fox News Digital. “We’ve provided detailed proposals and will continue to work with the administration and Congress to improve the regulatory framework.”
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“We don’t close accounts for political reasons, and we agree with President Trump that regulatory change is desperately needed,” a spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase told Fox News Digital. “We’re pleased to see the White House is addressing this issue, for which we’ve been advocating for many years, and look forward to working with them to get this right.”
The move comes after a Fox News Digital interview with Senate Banking Chairman Tim Scott, R-S.C., over the weekend, in which Scott outlined the “power [regulators use] to weaponize consistently against Republicans, consistently against conservatives, and consistently against the growth industries of our country.”
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