House Republicans are probing whether Bank of America “voluntarily” handed over to the FBI the list of customers who made transactions either on Jan. 6, 2021, or around that day, and the list of those who had purchased firearms through using the bank’s credit and debit cards.
The House Judiciary Committee, its Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, and the Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform and Antitrust are “conducting oversight” on how the FBI managed to gain access to the private information about American citizens.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the chair of both the committee and the Weaponization subcommittee, and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., the chair of the subcommittee on the administrative state, have sent a letter to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan in which they are asking for more details on the bank’s cooperation with the FBI.
In the letter, they ask for the CEO’s cooperation in their probe and for all the records that relate to the customer data that the bank had provided by June 8. This probe comes after an FBI whistleblower testified that the Bank of America without receiving a directive from the FBI had “data-mined its customer base” by creating a list of all those who had used one of the bank’s cards to make purchases between Jan. 5 and Jan. 7, 2021.
They proceed to explain in the letter that they had been informed that the information was given to the FBI “voluntarily and without any legal process.”
