FIRST ON FOX: House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., is investigating whether federal actors played any role in “debanking” conservatives, widening his probe into alleged political discrimination by financial institutions.
“The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating the improper debanking of individuals and entities based on political viewpoints or involvement in certain industries such as cryptocurrency and blockchain,” Comer wrote to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
“Specifically, the Committee is focused on whether the actions are self-initiated by financial institutions or done at the direction of government regulators.”
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Comer first launched his investigation in January of this year after investor Marc Andreessen said on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast that he knew of 30 tech founders who had been debanked, or dropped from their banks, during the Biden administration years due to their politics. Andreessen called it pressure against “political enemies.”
The Kentucky Republican also revealed at the time that there was evidence of first dady Melania Trump and first son Barron Trump being debanked over politics.
He expanded the investigation a month later into alleged politicization in the way the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) approached cryptocurrency regulation.
His new letter is now seeking “all documents and communications between the OCC and financial institutions related to the crypto or crypto-related business permissibility” as well as all similar communications with the Treasury, office of the president, and other entities regarding “the OCC’s review, strategy, and supervision of crypto or crypto-related activity for the financial institutions the OCC regulates.”
“As the FDIC review appeared focused on small institutions and did not include many of the nation’s largest banks which whistleblowers have identified during our investigation, the Committee seeks the OCC’s assistance to better understand your enforcement approach of larger financial institutions under your supervision,” the letter said.
“As the OCC is the primary regulator of banks chartered under the National Bank Act10 — specifically the nation’s largest banks with assets between $50 billion and $3 trillion11 — the Committee seeks information about the OCC’s enforcement of financial institution’s interest and expansion into crypto and crypto-related businesses.”
Comer told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” in January that he found “numerous instances of conservatives being debanked.”
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He questioned at the time whether it was part of the environmental, social, governance (ESG) corporate framework for a company’s sustainability and ethical impacts.
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“What we want to know is, is this a process of the banks’ ESG policy? Is this a – or is this our government stepping in? Like what we found with Twitter and Facebook where the government stepped in and said they wanted certain conservatives deplatformed and censored and certain conservative content removed?” Comer asked.
“We want to know again, is this the government involvement, another dirty trick by Joe Biden’s administration, or is this just bad liberal policy that discriminates against conservatives by the banks?”
