Earlier this year, and again last week, the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released reports that heavily criticized several large U.S. banks, and singled out Bank of America for its particularly egregious betrayal of its customers’ trust. The reports focused on how the financial institutions turned over customers’ financial and transaction data to federal authorities — most specifically following the incident U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 — without legal justification. In Bank of America’s case, the company did a sweeping search of its databases for customers’ private debit and credit card transactions in the D.C. area around the dates of the protests — something the government never asked it to do, according to the subcommittee.
Based on the subcommittee’s findings, National Legal and Policy Center has presented a shareholder proposal for consideration at Bank of America’s spring 2025 annual meeting. The Daily Signal’s Fred Lucas reports:
A watchdog group is pushing Bank of America to conduct an inquiry in light of revelations from a House panel probing weaponization of government that financial institutions are providing customers’ information to the FBI and Treasury Department.
The National Legal and Policy Center submitted a shareholder resolution asking that the Bank of America’s board conduct a review. The bank, NLPC proposed, should provide a public report “concerning the legality and judgment of management’s decision-making, and insufficient disclosure specificity, regarding the dissemination to government agencies of customers’ personal information.”
“If Bank of America was more transparent about how they disclose information, at least customers could look and say, ‘I want to do business with Bank of America,’ or ‘I don’t feel comfortable doing business with Bank of America,’” Paul Chesser, director of the corporate integrity project for the National Legal and Policy Center, told The Daily Signal on Wednesday.
NLPC’s proposal points out how, contrary to claims by the bank that it “followed the law,” that Bank of America turned over swaths of records that the FBI never asked for. More from The Daily Signal report:
The National Legal and Policy Center’s shareholder resolution cites the March interim report from the House, which concluded that Bank of America “voluntarily and without legal process, provided the FBI with a list of names of all individuals who used a BofA credit or debit card in the Washington, D.C. region between the dates of Jan. 5 and Jan. 7, 2021.”
Read the full Daily Signal report here, and the Weaponization Subcommittee released a video last week that explained its findings, which can be watched below.
𝐍𝐄𝐖 𝐑𝐄𝐏𝐎𝐑𝐓: 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐆𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐖𝐞𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐲 𝐀𝐜𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐩𝐲 𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐬
Think your finances are private? Think again.https://t.co/lXWqUB5iPZ pic.twitter.com/MdG3fZTR7j
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) December 6, 2024
