The practice of closing customers’ bank accounts, as well as failing to protect their financial transaction data, based upon ideological or political viewpoints, has been a focus of NLPC in recent years. As an investor in large Wall Street banks like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, we have brought shareholder proposals at both companies which sought increased accountability and transparency about their respective policies and practices related to discrimination — what you might also call “financial censorship.”
At JPMorgan Chase, we emphasized the company’s debanking of conservatives, most prominently in the case of the distinguished former U.S. Ambassador for Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback. This stood in stark contrast to Chase’s eagerness to continue doing business with the late sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein.
At Bank of America, we highlighted how the company turned over customers’ financial and transaction data to federal authorities — most specifically following the incident at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 — without legal justification, according to the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government under the House Judiciary Committee. Earlier this week we learned that Bank of America also allowed Epstein to continue to transact business long after he had been revealed as a convicted sex offender.
And of course, earlier this year President Trump accused both banks of forcing him to remove his money and close his accounts.
This week the Wall Street Journal conducted a podcast interview with one former customer of Bank of America, Steve Happ (pictured above), who is probably the best-known of the company’s debanking victims. Following are excerpts from the interview’s transcript — the Journal‘s hosts are Ryan Knutson and Alexander Saeedy:
Ryan Knutson: Steve Happ is a grandfather and a Christian. He founded an evangelical business and nonprofit in Africa…
Ryan Knutson: Steve takes regular mission trips to Uganda, and in the spring of 2023, he was packing for another one.
Steve Happ: I brought baby clothes for some of the orphans that we support…
Ryan Knutson: Steve was ready to go. Everything was in order, until he checked the mail… Five letters, one for each of his accounts with Bank of America.
Steve Happ: And the letter says, “We’ve made the decision to restrict your deposit account in the next 21 days and close it in 30 days from the date of this letter.” … Of course, I panicked. My first thought was, wait, this has got to be an error.
Ryan Knutson: A week before his Uganda trip, all of his accounts, including his church’s account, his charity’s account and credit cards were locked. More than $270,000 were frozen. He had bills due, employees to pay, money that was supposed to go towards his missionary work, but when Steve showed the letters to his local branch manager…
Steve Happ: It was so odd because she came back and she said, “I’m sorry, I can’t discuss this with you.” And so that’s basically been the way it’s been all along.
Happ’s case was taken up by Christian nonprofit legal group Alliance Defending Freedom. He spoke at Bank of America’s annual meeting in April in support of a shareholder proposal (not one presented by NLPC) that sought restrictions on viewpoint-based debanking. When ADF got Happ’s story circulating in the media, the bank — which had previously left him in the dark about why his accounts were shuttered — began to explain why, with a dubious excuse. More from the WSJ podcast:
Alexander Saeedy: They started to say, “We closed his accounts because he was operating a debt collection business in Uganda, which is a violation of our policies. We don’t do small business banking for debt collectors in Africa.”
Ryan Knutson: A website for a business entity Steve oversees includes a line that says quote, “Our business is dedicated to pursuing the recovery of overdue invoices on behalf of clients.” It also mentions that its customer center is in Africa. According to Bank of America, it looked like two problems in one, a business operating outside the US, which their policy for its small business line forbids, and a business in debt collection, a line of work that the bank deems risky. Since Steve’s accounts were linked, the bank shut them all down, but it didn’t explain this to the guy who needed to hear it most.
Steve says his organization doesn’t do debt collection, and two years after this whole debacle, he isn’t buying Bank of America’s explanation… I asked Steve what he would’ve done if the bank had just told him the problem from the start. If you said, “What’s going on?” And they said, “Oh, well, we flagged your account because it looks like it’s tied to debt collection,” you could have been like-
Steve Happ: That would’ve been easy to explain.
And in such circumstances, when you’re a bank perfectly willing to retain business with the likes of Jeffrey Epstein while canceling religious or conservative small-timers without offering a reason for doing so, or granting the customer an opportunity to explain — then you don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.
