House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has issued a subpoena to Citibank over allegations that the bank turned over information on all its customers who were in the Washington D.C. area on January 6, 2021. The committee has previously subpoenaed Bank of America for the same reasons.
Jordan issued the subpoena on Thursday after the megabank failed to provide the committee with requested documents. “Bank of America (BoA) provided the FBI — voluntarily and without any legal process — with a list of individuals who made transactions in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area with a BoA credit or debit card between January 5 and January 7, 2021,” Jordan wrote in a letter. “The Committee has also learned that individuals who had previously purchased a firearm with a BoA product were elevated to the top of that list, regardless of the time or place of the firearm purchase. Given this concerning testimony, the Committee has written to other major financial institutions, including Citibank, to determine whether those entities were involved in similar conduct.”
The letter went on to state that a Citibank representative was in attendance for a Zoom call organized by the FBI for financial institutions after January 6.
“In addition, the Committee and Select Subcommittee have recently obtained documents that raise new concerns regarding the extent to which financial institutions, including Citibank, may have shared customer information with federal law enforcement despite the customers having no individualized nexus to criminal conduct,” Jordan went on to say. “In particular, these documents indicate that a Citibank representative was included on emails and Zoom discussions organized by the FBI and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) focused on ‘identifying the best approach to information sharing, both strategic and operational,’ in the wake of the events of January 6.”
“These documents suggest that the executive branch was brainstorming informal methods—
outside of legal process—for obtaining private customer information from financial institutions,” the letter continued.
Jordan recently hinted at legislation that would crack down on financial institutions who employ these practices during a recent interview with Just The News.