OPINION:
Kicking a former president of the United States out of your business isn’t a particularly bright thing to do. J.P. Morgan and CEO Jamie Dimon are finding that out the hard way now that President Trump has launched a $5 billion lawsuit against the financial powerhouse.
A month after Joseph R. Biden took the oath of office, J.P. Morgan notified Mr. Trump that he was being fired as a customer, despite his decades with the company and his successful deals totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. He was given 60 days to clear his cash out of their vault with no option to discuss or appeal the determination.
The lawsuit argues that J.P. Morgan management’s woke views motivated this move.
“It’s so wrong,” Mr. Trump said on Air Force One. “I don’t know what their excuse would be. Maybe their excuse would be the regulators, I don’t know. Regardless, I guess it’s a good lawsuit because every pundit has come out and said Trump has a great lawsuit here. You’re not allowed to do what they did.”
Blaming the regulators was exactly what J.P. Morgan did.
“Our company does not close accounts for political or religious reasons,” the company asserted in a statement last week. “We do close accounts because they create legal or regulatory risk for the company. We regret having to do so, but often rules and regulatory expectations lead us to do so. … [W]e support this Administration’s efforts to prevent the weaponization of the banking sector.”
Mr. Trump’s complaint contends that J.P. Morgan put his entire family on a financial industry blacklist designed to warn other institutions about mountebanks who write bad checks, something the 45th and 47th president has never done.
Although it’s highly unlikely that J.P. Morgan will end up paying a $5 billion judgment, the litigation could force the institution to describe in greater detail how Mr. Biden’s administration pressured the firm to withhold financial services from political enemies.
This nefarious plot, called Operation Choke Point, affected high-profile conservative individuals and organizations such as the National Committee for Religious Freedom and the Family Council, an Arkansas-based nonprofit. The council complained that its ongoing existence was threatened when it lost the ability to process donations.
Congress needs to redraft any laws that allow political or religious disagreements to serve as an excuse to sever someone’s ties to the financial system. As we edge closer to becoming a cashless society, debanking represents a serious punishment that is inappropriate except in cases of fraud or other lawbreaking.
Mr. Biden’s family, including son Hunter, had no trouble holding multiple accounts despite hundreds of suspicious transactions that House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigators allege were evidence of money being laundered from foreign governments.
Last year, Mr. Trump issued executive orders prohibiting Uncle Sam’s participation in debanking schemes. Although that is helpful now, it won’t do much good if voters put a Democrat back in the Oval Office in 2028.
The effort to banish conservatives from the economy coincided with Mr. Biden’s push to force social media companies to censor his opponents. Our democratic republic can’t survive if one political party gets away with manipulating the levers of government to crush the free speech and livelihood of its opposition.
Mr. Trump should avoid offers to settle this case. Putting J.P. Morgan executives under oath in a potentially televised Florida trial would create a spectacle that could help the public understand what’s at stake in the next election.
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