The Justice Department has issued criminal subpoenas to three of America's biggest banks demanding records of closed customer accounts, the sharpest federal legal action yet in the Trump administration's campaign against what it calls ideological discrimination by Wall Street.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C., led by Jeanine Pirro, has served subpoenas on JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, requesting lists of customers whose accounts were closed and the banks' stated reasons for those closures, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Reuters independently confirmed the subpoenas the same day. The investigation represents a direct escalation from civil regulatory pressure to criminal inquiry in the administration's sustained fight over so-called debanking.
Debanking refers to the practice of closing or refusing accounts to customers based on their political affiliations, religious beliefs, or business activities that financial institutions consider controversial, among them gun dealers, fossil fuel companies, and faith-based organizations. For years, conservatives have argued that Wall Street uses its gatekeeping power over financial access as an ideological enforcement mechanism. The DOJ subpoenas signal the administration now intends to treat those allegations as a law enforcement matter.
Pirro's office is investigating whether the banks' conduct may have violated the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989, known as FIRREA, according to the Wall Street Journal. The law was written to prosecute savings-and-loan fraud but has since been applied broadly against financial institutions. Criminal subpoenas carry significantly more legal weight than regulatory requests; they compel testimony and document production under penalty of prosecution for obstruction and put the banks in a far more exposed legal position than any agency inquiry.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency provided early evidentiary groundwork. On December 10, the OCC released preliminary findings from a review of the nine largest national banks mandated by an executive order Trump signed earlier that year. The review covered the period from 2020 to 2025, and the agency's preliminary findings identified problematic practices between 2020 and 2023 at all nine institutions, including JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank, and others. The banks had internal policies that either refused services to certain industries or subjected those clients to elevated scrutiny beyond what their actual financial risk warranted. Affected sectors included oil and gas, coal, firearms manufacturers, payday lenders, and digital-asset businesses. OCC Comptroller Jonathan Gould said it was "unfortunate that the nation's largest banks thought these harmful debanking policies were an appropriate use of their government-granted charter and market power." The OCC had not sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department; Pirro's office opened its investigation independently, the Journal reported.
Neither Bank of America nor Wells Fargo responded to requests for comment, according to Reuters. JPMorgan declined to publicly address the new subpoenas but had previously disclosed in regulatory filings that it was facing federal reviews and investigations related to its account management practices.
Escalation of a Sustained Campaign
The criminal subpoenas follow a direct legal assault the president launched in January. Trump sued JPMorgan Chase and chief executive Jamie Dimon for at least $5 billion, alleging the bank closed accounts belonging to Trump and his associates for political reasons. Dimon told CNBC in March that the lawsuit "has no merit," but acknowledged that banks sometimes close accounts to reduce regulatory exposure. "We debank people because it causes legal, regulatory risk for us," Dimon said, according to CNBC.
The administration has pushed the debanking issue on multiple fronts simultaneously. Beyond the lawsuit and the DOJ probe, both the OCC and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have backed a proposed rule that would prohibit regulators from pressuring banks to close accounts based on a customer's political or religious views. The decision to add a criminal investigation to that mix puts banks in unfamiliar territory, where the question is no longer just regulatory compliance but potential criminal liability.
What happens next depends heavily on what the subpoenas produce. Whether the banks comply, mount legal challenges, or seek a negotiated resolution will shape the timeline. If Pirro's office determines the evidence supports criminal charges, any indictments would be among the most consequential federal actions against a major financial institution in years. Senate Democrats are already framing the probe as politically motivated intimidation, and the $5 billion civil suit against JPMorgan continues to run on a separate track. For gun shop owners, energy producers, and other businesses that lost banking access in recent years, the subpoenas are the first sign that the federal government may treat their complaints as more than a policy grievance.
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