House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) subpoenaed Citibank on Thursday for not cooperating in an investigation into whether financial institutions are sharing data with the FBI.
“On June 12, 2023, we requested your voluntary cooperation with our oversight to determine the extent to which financial institutions, such as Citibank, have worked with the FBI to collect Americans’ financial data,” the subpoena reads. “To date, Citibank has declined to comply with our request voluntarily, and counsel has represented that it will only comply pursuant to a subpoena.”
In June, the Judiciary Committee sent letters to multiple financial organizations “requesting voluntary cooperation to determine the extent to which banks illegally supplied the FBI with Americans’ financial data.” Overall, seven banks were asked for information: Bank of America, Citibank, J.P. Morgan, PNC, Truist, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo.
In Thursday’s statement, Jordan’s office accused Bank of America of sharing “Americans’ private financial data,” to the bureau “without legal process.” They noted that the data allegedly shared was related to “transactions made in the Washington, D.C., area around Jan. 6, 2021.”
The Ohio Republican also alleged that individuals who purchased a firearm with a Bank of America product around the time of the Jan. 6 riot on the Capitol were elevated to the top of the list provided to the FBI.
The transaction data, according to CNN Business, could have been used to show the travel routes and location of suspected rioters — or used to detect the purchase of weapons.
Jordan said lawmakers obtained documents that show a Citibank representative on emails and Zoom discussions organized by the FBI and another agency that was focused on information sharing following the insurrection.
“Federal law enforcement’s use of back-channel discussions with financial institutions as a method to investigate and obtain private financial data of Americans is alarming,” he wrote in his letter.
Citibank, according to reports, was the only one that did not comply with the committee’s request.
That request came after the committee launched the investigation in May, following reports by an FBI whistleblower that Bank of America was “voluntarily” sharing the information.
“An FBI whistleblower has disclosed that shortly after the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Bank of America (BoA) provided the FBI — voluntarily and without any legal process — with a list of individuals who had made transactions in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area with a BoA credit or debit card between January 5 and January 7, 2021,” the May letter to Bank of America reads.