By For years, Democrats have touted Barack Obama’s presidency as a model of clean governance, free of major scandal, besides a tan suit. Anybody paying attention understood that it was a fiction, but now new accounts from senior banking executives suggest otherwise, alleging that both the Obama and Biden administrations leaned on financial institutions to cut off conservatives and their allies under the guise of regulatory compliance.
The executives, speaking anonymously to Fox News Digital for fear of reprisals, described the Obama and Biden administrations as launching a pressure campaign of “debanking”—the practice of closing accounts or denying services without explanation. Originally tied to anti-money laundering laws, debanking has increasingly drawn criticism from conservative and religious groups who argue it is being used to punish them for their beliefs.
“When there’s ambiguity in the law, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and for a long time the beholder was the Obama and Biden administration,” one executive explained.
At the heart of these allegations lies “Operation Choke Point,” a Department of Justice initiative undertaken under Obama that sought to label certain legal businesses—from firearms dealers to payday lenders — as “high risk.” A House Oversight report found the strategy was designed to “choke out” disfavored industries by scaring banks into cutting ties. Though President Donald Trump formally ended the program in 2017, critics charge that Biden has resurrected it in the form of “Operation Choke Point 2.0,” now aimed at sectors such as cryptocurrency.
“Those pressures were very, very real,” a senior banker said. “When your regulator gives you a suggestion, it’s not a suggestion, it’s an order. The political stuff is very real, those pressures are real.” Banks, he added, were effectively coerced into filing endless suspicious activity reports and preemptively rejecting clients who might later attract scrutiny. “It’s better for us to just not take on certain business if we suspect an examiner can come in and say six months ago you shouldn’t have taken this client.”
Executives also pointed to how media narratives were used against conservatives, with negative coverage rebranded as “reputational risk” to justify closing accounts. The tactic, they said, became especially pronounced in the turbulent years between the 2020 election and Trump’s 2024 return to the White House. “It’s all kind of set up, it’s like somebody set the table, and it all ends up focusing on Republicans and conservatives,” one remarked.
The list of alleged victims runs high. Trump himself accused JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America of rejecting over $1 billion in deposits. In her memoir, former First Lady Melania Trump recalled: “I was shocked and dismayed to learn that my long-time bank decided to terminate my account and deny my son the opportunity to open a new one.… This decision appeared to be rooted in political discrimination, raising serious concerns about civil rights violations.” Former Senator Sam Brownback has likewise charged that JPMorgan debanked his nonprofit, the National Committee for Religious Freedom, in 2022.
Seeking to curb such practices, Trump signed an executive order this August titled Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans, barring banks from citing reputational risk as a reason to terminate accounts. Tim Schwarzenberger of Inspire Investing hailed the order as a “breakthrough moment,” noting that major institutions have since reaffirmed commitments to neutrality. JPMorgan insisted, “We don’t close accounts for political reasons, and we agree with President Trump that regulatory change is desperately needed.” Bank of America struck a similar tone: “We welcome the Trump administration’s efforts to provide regulatory clarity to banks. We’ve provided detailed proposals and will continue to work with the administration and Congress to improve the regulatory framework.”
Whether these statements mark a real shift or merely a public relations recalibration remains uncertain. What is clear is that the long-standing liberal claim of a scandal-free Obama administration looks increasingly fragile in light of these revelations, and over time, his administration looks more like it was propped up by a media propaganda campaign than reality. Neither Obama nor Biden’s representatives responded to requests for comment.
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