JPMorgan admits it closed Trump's accounts after the Jan 6 attack

NEW YORK: JPMorgan Chase acknowledged for the first time that it closed the bank accounts of President Donald Trump and several of his businesses in the political and legal aftermath of the Jan 6, 2021 attacks on the US Capitol, the latest development in a legal saga between the president and the nation's biggest bank over the issue known as "debanking."

The acknowledgment came in a court filing submitted this week in Trump's lawsuit against the bank and its leader, Jamie Dimon. The president sued for $5 billion, alleging that his accounts were closed for political reasons, disrupting his business operations. "In Feb 2021, JPMorgan informed Plaintiffs that certain accounts maintained with JPMorgan's CB and PB would be closed," JPMorgan's former chief administrative officer Dan Wilkening wrote in the court filing. The "PB" and "CB" stands for JPMorgan's private bank and commercial bank.

Until now, JPMorgan has never admitted it closed the president's accounts in writing. The bank would only speak hypothetically about when the bank closes accounts and its reasons for closing accounts, citing bank privacy laws. A spokeswoman for the bank declined to comment beyond what the bank said in its legal filings.