Bank of America must come clean on de-banking – Latest News
Bank of America must come clean: Did it “de-bank” the makers of a movie about Ronald Reagan?
That’s the declare made by RawHide Pictures, the manufacturing company behind the biopic in regards to the great Californian conservative.
RawHide confirmed The California Post a 2021 letter from the bank wherein it advised the company that it might be closing its accounts.
The company’s accounts have been later restored, after an appeal — however not earlier than it needed to scramble to seek out one other bank.
RawHide Pictures claimed that Bank of America “debanked” its accounts whereas it was filming the Reagan biopic. Courtesy Everett Collection
Bank of America by no means supplied the company any rationalization, and it nonetheless refuses to say why it cut its ties with the “Reagan” filmmakers.
But the choice got here across the similar time that Bank of America allegedly cut ties with different conservatives — together with, most infamously, President Donald Trump himself.
Trump stated a 12 months in the past that Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase each rejected his deposits after he left the presidency.
The “de-banking” was half of a broader effort by massive banks and massive social media corporations to isolate Trump and to exclude him from public life.
Bank of America by no means supplied the company any rationalization, and it nonetheless refuses to say why it cut its ties with the “Reagan” filmmakers. AP
The effort accelerated after the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, when the media deemed Trump a hazard to society, and his social media accounts have been suspended.
But in fact, the hassle had begun long earlier than — even earlier than the 2020 election, when the media began reducing away from Trump’s speeches to keep away from airing his claims of fraud.
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In reality, Trump was first censored by Twitter (in its pre-Elon Musk days) in July 2020, when he posted a hyperlink to a video press convention of medical doctors who had questioned the scientific consensus about coronavirus.
The de-banking effort had additionally been within the works for years. In 2018, Bank of America introduced that it might stop offering financial companies to sure gun producers.
The bank later reversed course. But the precedent was set: If you belonged to a group that the political left didn’t like, you could possibly lose entry to the American financial system.
Less than a decade earlier than, the federal government had focused conservative teams for particular scrutiny by the IRS after they tried to use for nonprofit standing.
But beneath strain from the left, that effort quickly unfold to the non-public sector as properly.
Trump’s Department of Justice has subpoenaed JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America. We sit up for studying what it uncovers.
The American people must know how far de-banking went.
