House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) issued a subpoena to Bank of America as part of an investigation into how financial institutions handled customer information around the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
In a letter to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, Jordan said the bank had failed to voluntarily provide documents requested by the committee regarding information sharing with the FBI during the days around the riot.
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“On May 25, 2023, we requested your voluntary cooperation with our oversight efforts to determine the extent to which financial institutions, such as Bank of America Corporation (BoA), worked with the FBI to collect Americans’ data. In response, the Committee has received 223 pages of documents responsive to our original requests. However, to date, BoA has refused to provide the Committee and Select Subcommittee with the filing it turned over to the FBI,” the letter said.
Jordan expressed concern over information the bank provided to the FBI “voluntarily and without any legal process” and said if the bank had “lawful authority” to do so, then Congress should “consider reforms that adequately protect Americans’ information.”
“Indeed, if such a lawful authority exists, as BoA asserts, for BoA to freely share private financial information without any legal process or specific nexus to criminality, Congress has a responsibility to consider reforms that adequately protect Americans’ information. It should not be the case that federal law enforcement has carte blanche access to Americans’ financial information by deeming a transaction or class of transactions as ‘suspicious’ or otherwise,” the letter said.
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“For that reason, to inform such legislation, it is critical that the Committee understand the full extent of the information-sharing between BoA and the FBI, including review of BoA’s ‘filing’ that it emailed to the FBI,” the letter continued.
The investigation into Bank of America by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, of which Jordan is also chairman, was opened in May, with the panel originally giving the bank a June 8 deadline to provide the requested documents. The inquiry is one of several investigations related to the government’s handling of the Capitol riot by House Republicans.
