Years ago I got a sneaky fee from Experian and at the time it was quite a bit of money in some kind of monitoring service that auto-enrolled you after you got your score. When I complained to Experian they immediately offered a discounted rate. I raised a case with CFPB and shows Experian and I don’t know what happened behind the scenes but they backed down and refunded all the sneaky fees.
I’m not a financial regulations expert, but that little incident was the 1st time in a long time I felt like an agency could actually help rather than just hassle people.
Today’s CFPB current leadership seems full of hyperpartisan apparatchiks. They want to snuff out this CFPB entity.
This debanking matter specifically may well fall within the agency’s purview, but the CFPB we’re seeing today bears little resemblance to the strong consumer watchdog it was created to be.
Its acting director Mark Paoletta seems like exactly the kind of Washington-lawyer-regulation-job comple partisan attorney you’d want nowhere near an agency charged with protecting people.
CFPB is interesting. Banks largely hate it and this administration had a major input in defanging it, which makes this action more interesting. FWIW, while rank and file employees effectively enforcing BSA laws are broadly tend to be somewhat neutral ( and you do want disinterested parties ), I agree with your hesitation on the current state of federal agencies.
The banks will start subscribing to the Truth social early news functionality and all these problems will disappear.
The current issues they’re worried about being hit by the law once the administration changes so they’ve stayed far away from the Truth Social stuff. This is likely just a little push to get them over the hump.
That quote is not at all what they said, it appears to have been invented out of thin air by PBS.
Capital One said the closures were a result of review "in accordance with bank policies and regulatory guidance". They did not state they were concerned about money laundering.
AML teams at banks are not limited to money laundering investigations, which PBS would've known if they did even the smallest amount of journalism.
In fact, Capital One explicitly stated they have never revealed the reason behind the closure -- mentioned in the same article.
This is significant because according to internal Capital One documents, along with 8 other banks, they explicitly have policies that deny banking access on the basis of lists that target lawful banking for political reasons. [1]
Another reason this report is garbage is that Capital One would've been obligated to file Suspicious Activity Reports if they suspected money laundering, which would've appeared in the FinCEN leaks. The Trump Organization and no Trump-affiliated were found in them. [2] The leaks included DB's SARs, who was a known Trump-affiliated bank.
"Capital One has never accused the Trump Organization of illegal money laundering. But Friday's filing argues that "documents and Plaintiffs’ own allegations make clear that Capital One closed Plaintiffs’ accounts for anti-money laundering (“AML”) reasons"
Plenty of news organizations covered it, that was from the Reuters version
There was a maga talking point about how "woke" banks were shutting down maga affiliated accounts and this whole thing is nothing but red meat for their voters
And insurance that no matter how many crimes and how disgusting and slimy the swamp creature is, no matter how ill gotten tht again, if it doesn't break a clear law the bank has no say. You must take every grifter every swindler that comes by. If they haven't found some legally defined means to be shown the door.
In this blog post, Patrick McKenzie (ex Stripe) details with accuracy how mostly left leaning organisations weaponised banking and website terms of services to “cancel” the business necessities for people and organisations they did not like:
16 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 21.2 ms ] threadI’m not a financial regulations expert, but that little incident was the 1st time in a long time I felt like an agency could actually help rather than just hassle people.
Today’s CFPB current leadership seems full of hyperpartisan apparatchiks. They want to snuff out this CFPB entity.
This debanking matter specifically may well fall within the agency’s purview, but the CFPB we’re seeing today bears little resemblance to the strong consumer watchdog it was created to be.
Its acting director Mark Paoletta seems like exactly the kind of Washington-lawyer-regulation-job comple partisan attorney you’d want nowhere near an agency charged with protecting people.
The current issues they’re worried about being hit by the law once the administration changes so they’ve stayed far away from the Truth Social stuff. This is likely just a little push to get them over the hump.
"Trump bank accounts were closed due to concerns over possible money laundering, Capital One says"
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-bank-accounts-we...
Capital One said the closures were a result of review "in accordance with bank policies and regulatory guidance". They did not state they were concerned about money laundering.
AML teams at banks are not limited to money laundering investigations, which PBS would've known if they did even the smallest amount of journalism.
In fact, Capital One explicitly stated they have never revealed the reason behind the closure -- mentioned in the same article.
This is significant because according to internal Capital One documents, along with 8 other banks, they explicitly have policies that deny banking access on the basis of lists that target lawful banking for political reasons. [1]
Another reason this report is garbage is that Capital One would've been obligated to file Suspicious Activity Reports if they suspected money laundering, which would've appeared in the FinCEN leaks. The Trump Organization and no Trump-affiliated were found in them. [2] The leaks included DB's SARs, who was a known Trump-affiliated bank.
[1] https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2026/nr-occ...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FinCEN_Files
"Capital One has never accused the Trump Organization of illegal money laundering. But Friday's filing argues that "documents and Plaintiffs’ own allegations make clear that Capital One closed Plaintiffs’ accounts for anti-money laundering (“AML”) reasons"
Plenty of news organizations covered it, that was from the Reuters version
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/capital-one-says-it...
Other points:
* Capital One says anti-money laundering review prompted closure of more than 300 Trump-affiliated accounts
* Trump Organization and Eric Trump sued in March 2025, alleging political debanking
Notice "political debanking" :)
Reuters made the same rudimentary error. Capital One never said that in any filing. They said the opposite, that they have never revealed ANY reason.
You can read the filings yourself, or review the notable lack of SARs in the FinCEN leaks.
Capital One is obligated to file SARs in the event of money laundering. They did not do so.
https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/nonprofit-indicted-ba...
Now the same tactics have been used to cancel the cancellers:
https://www.cato.org/blog/judge-denies-motion-toss-splc-indi...
This is a dangerous example what happens when someone brings non court judgement to the IT.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/oct/19/the-canary-lef...
from https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2026/nr-occ...