OCC finds all nine largest U.S. banks debanked customers over politics or religion

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said Wednesday that all nine of the largest banks under its supervision maintained policies between 2020 and September 2025 that could have required, encouraged or otherwise led them to deny or limit financial services to customers because of their political views, religious beliefs or lawful business activities. The findings, announced in a news release accompanying a 47-page report, mark the most sweeping conclusion yet in a two-year-old federal campaign against what the Trump administration calls "politicized debanking."

The banks named are JPMorgan Chase Bank, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo Bank, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC Bank, TD Bank and BMO Bank, the nine national banks the OCC supervises directly because of their size. The agency said it did not conclude that every policy it identified resulted in an actual denial of service, but that each bank maintained reputation-risk frameworks lacking "clear standards and objective, risk-based criteria" during the period examined.

"Today's report provides irrefutable evidence that the nation's largest banks have denied, debanked and discriminated against customers and lawful businesses," said Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan V. Gould. "Fair access to financial services is not a mantra—it is a mandate. The Trump Administration is committed to ending the weaponization of finance against hardworking Americans, once and for all."

The numbers behind the findings

In compiling the report, the OCC said it reviewed nearly 100,000 complaints filed against OCC-regulated institutions and received roughly 50,000 documents, totaling about 420,000 pages, from the nine banks covering their policies, procedures and individual customer decisions. The agency said the banks maintained both public and nonpublic policies restricting access for customers tied to oil and gas exploration, coal mining or coal-fired power, firearms and ammunition manufacturing or distribution, construction or operation of detention facilities, tobacco and e-cigarette sales, and digital-asset businesses.

The report also laid out specific episodes. It found that in February 2021, a payment processor owned by one bank closed the account of a merchant selling merchandise tied to President Trump and his "Make America Great Again" brand. Two years later, the report said, a different bank declined to provide financial services to a public education-focused organization because its political arm had endorsed only Democratic candidates. Until 2025, the report added, one bank's business line treated any customer engaged in "partisan activity" as presumptively high risk, while organizations it deemed "bipartisan" continued to receive service.

How the review began

The inquiry traces to January 2025, when Mr. Trump confronted Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan from the stage of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, accusing the bank of refusing to serve conservatives. Mr. Trump has separately said JPMorgan Chase and other lenders closed accounts tied to him and his family after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; former first lady Melania Trump wrote in her memoir that her own account was closed and that their son Barron was denied a new one in the same period.

Mr. Trump signed Executive Order 14331, "Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans," on Aug. 7, 2025, directing federal regulators to strip "reputation risk" from their examination standards and to investigate whether banks had engaged in politically or religiously motivated debanking. The OCC opened its supervisory review of its nine largest banks the following month and issued preliminary findings in December 2025, which cited the same nine lenders but relied mainly on the banks' own environmental and social-responsibility policy statements from 2020 to 2022 rather than individual case files. Wednesday's report builds directly on that earlier review, adding specific examples and extending the examined period to September of this year.

Who is affected

The report's industry list reads as a roster of businesses that have periodically found themselves out of favor with large lenders over the past decade: coal and oil and gas producers that banks began shedding after 2015, gun makers and retailers that several banks restricted after the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting, private detention-facility operators dropped by some lenders in 2019, and cryptocurrency firms that have long complained of what the industry calls "Operation Choke Point 2.0." The report's two named examples, however, point to a different and more explicitly partisan category: merchants and advocacy groups whose political affiliation, rather than their line of business, appeared to trigger a bank's internal risk flags.

None of the nine banks has disputed that reputation-risk policies existed during the period in question, though several, including Bank of America, have said in the past that political or religious belief was never an explicit factor in closing accounts. "We never close accounts for political reasons and don't have a political litmus test," a Bank of America spokesperson said after the December findings, and Mr. Moynihan later told reporters, "We bank everybody." The Bank Policy Institute, a trade group representing the largest lenders, said after the earlier report that the industry supports fair access to banking and is working with Congress and the administration on consistent standards.

Reaction on Capitol Hill

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott, R-S.C., called the findings "damning" and told reporters that "debanking Americans over faith or politics is simply un-American," adding that the committee would take up the issue when Congress returns from recess. Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa., a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said the report "exposes how far Biden-era debanking went to pressure banks to cut off Americans for their politics, faith, and lawful businesses." Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., who also sits on that committee, said he met with OCC officials the same day and condemned what he called "politically motivated debanking brought on by Obama/Biden financial regulators."

Democrats on the Banking Committee, who have pushed their own long-running inquiry into debanking of cryptocurrency and marijuana-related businesses, did not immediately issue statements on Wednesday's report. Some academic critics of the OCC's December findings, including Georgetown University law professor Adam Levitin, had argued that the earlier review documented heightened scrutiny of certain industries rather than outright denial of legally required banking services, a distinction the OCC's own report does not fully resolve.

What happens next

The report announced no fines or enforcement actions against the nine banks. Instead, Mr. Gould said the agency would weigh further changes to its supervisory framework rather than rely on the banks' own recent policy revisions, many of which pared back environmental, social and governance language after the executive order was signed.

"Notwithstanding certain efforts by the largest banks to rein in these practices, I am not confident that they will be enough," Mr. Gould said in the report. "Accordingly, the OCC will be assessing further changes to the regulatory and supervisory framework applicable to the largest banks to reduce the likelihood of these harmful practices recurring in the future." The report acknowledged limits to its own scope, saying the agency remained "unable to quantify on a comprehensive basis the full extent of debanking or alleged debanking actions" despite the volume of documents and complaints it reviewed.

The OCC said it would continue weighing whether to factor findings of "politicized" debanking into bank merger approvals, new charter applications and Community Reinvestment Act examinations, steps it signaled in earlier guidance issued last fall. The Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which share oversight of large banks with the OCC, have conducted parallel reviews under the same executive order; neither agency had released comparable findings as of Wednesday evening. Separately, federal prosecutors in Washington have issued subpoenas to several of the same banks seeking records on account closures, a civil inquiry that is proceeding independently of the OCC's supervisory review.