The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Wednesday announced an investigation into nine big banks after a found that during the Biden years, they closed accounts or restricted services for conservatives, MAGA merchants, pro-life causes, Christian groups, and industries disfavored by the Biden administration, such as firearms, oil and gas.
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The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) launched a review of the activities of the nine banks in September 2025, soon after President Trump issued Executive Order 14331, “Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans.”
The OCC investigated nearly 100,000 complaints and found that between 2020 and 2025, banks used overly broad “reputation risk” and “industry-specific” practices to deny access to financial services to mainly conservative individuals and organizations over their political or religious beliefs.
The report, released Wednesday, shows that banks relied heavily on Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) hate-group designations to justify denying services.
The OCC specifically identified JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC, TD Bank, and BMO Bank as employing unfair debanking practices against the disfavored groups.
Together, the nine banks account for a majority of the total assets of commercial banks and savings associations supervised by the OCC.
“The banks largely lacked clear and measurable standards and objective, risk-based criteria for assessing the reputation risks of customer relationships,” the OCC said.
The report cited multiple examples of conservative/Christian Americans who were debanked, including the sellers of “MAGA gear” and religious organizations who were labeled as “hate groups” by the SPLC.
According to the report, JPMorgan’s payment processor, WePay, regularly flagged terms like “MAGA,” “Make America Great,” and “America First” in merchants’ profiles, websites, and transaction records. Several of the search terms were reportedly added after the January 6, 2021, Capitol protest.
Specifically, JPMorgan closed the account of a merchant that sold Pro-Trump merchandise, based on the SPLC smear that anything associated with MAGA promoted “hate, violence, or racial intolerance.” A Christian organization was deemed a “hate group” by WePay over its stance on LGBTQ issues.
Employees described the organization as a “[r]ight wing religious conservative non profit with strong anti LGBTQ rhetoric.”
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WePay also closed an account raising money for a “devout Christian’s” legal challenge to anti-discrimination laws.
PNC denied a line of credit to a successful media company after the bank’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) group examined the political views of the conservative Christian owners.
The employee who recommended the rejection said, “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.”
In February 2021, TD Bank allegedly decided not to extend a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan for a nonprofit organization promoting anti-immigration positions, based on negative media coverage and allegations by the SPLC that it was a “hate group.”
The SPLC has since been indicted on six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering for allegedly funneling more than $3 million in funds to members of white supremacist and other extremist groups. FBI Director Kash Patel in April described the SPLC as a “partisan smear machine.”
A few banks also discriminated against industries disfavored by the Biden administration, refusing loans to firearms businesses and restricting oil and gas exploration, according to the report.
Mark Paoletta, Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), described the debanking of American consumers as “appalling” and announced an investigation into the practices.
“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. Many of those targeted were supporters of President Trump. These thuggish tactics, which were also a defining feature of the Biden-Chopra CFPB, have no place in America,” said CFPB’s Acting Director Mark Paoletta. “We thank the Department of the Treasury and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for conducting its review to shed light on these shameful practices. The CFPB will fully investigate whether the institutions featured in OCC’s report and others have complied with federal consumer financial laws and take appropriate action.”
The OCC noted that while the banks claimed to have revised their practices, the reforms had not gone far enough to prevent discrimination based on political or religious views.
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