Thanks to some new astounding reporting from Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, we learned Thursday that Bank of America is apparently handing private customer information over to the feds as part of the investigation into the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol. According to Carlson, the bank – one of the largest in the country – is giving out this information to federal law enforcement officials without the consent (or even the knowledge) of its customers.
Carlson said that the Biden administration has been opaque about its search for “domestic extremists” since the events at the Capitol.
“What exactly are they doing?” Carlson asked. “How are they hunting these extremists they keep telling us about, but will not describe?
“We now know part of the answer to that question,” Carlson continued. “This show has obtained exclusively evidence that Bank of America, the second largest bank in the country with more than 60 million customers, is actively but secretly engaged in the hunt for extremists in cooperation with the government.”
The Fox News host then laid out his damning allegations.
“Bank of America is, without the knowledge or the consent of its customers, sharing private information with federal law enforcement agencies,” Carlson continued. “Bank of American effectively is acting as an intelligence agency, but they’re not telling you about it. In the days after the January 6 riot at the Capitol, Bank of America went through its own customers’ financial and transaction records … these were the private records of Americans who had committed no crime, people, who as far as we know, had absolutely nothing to do with what happened at the Capitol on January 6.”
Carlson, quoting from a profile they exclusively obtained, found that Bank of America was scouring through its databases for any customers who were “confirmed as transacting either through bank account, debit card, or credit card purchases in Washington, D.C., between January 5 and January 6. Number two, purchases made for hotels, Airbnb, RSVPs, in Washington, Virginia, or Maryland after January 6. Number three, any purchase of weapons or at a weapons-related merchant between January 7 and their upcoming suspected stay in the D.C. area around Inauguration Day. And four, airline-related purchases since January 6.”
That’s a hell of a broad profile when you’re talking about leaking customer information to the FBI, is it not? Not only does this reflect disturbingly on Bank of America, it is highly questionable when it comes to the practices of federal law enforcement. They’re going to track down and interview everyone in the country who bought something in D.C. on those dates? They’re going to interrogate anyone who purchased ANY plane tickets on those dates?
“We spoke to a number of lawyers about this today, and some of them told us that what Bank of America did might in fact not be legal, and could in fact be challenged in court,” said Carlson.
This appears to be a witch hunt of the highest order, and if it isn’t precisely illegal, it is definitely wrong.
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