GOP lawmakers question banks on whether they provided private customer data following Jan. 6 riot

House Republican lawmakers raised concerns with major banks Monday about voluntarily providing the FBI and other federal law-enforcement agencies with customers’ private financial data during investigations of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio and subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform and Antitrust Chairman Thomas Massie of Kentucky sent letters to Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase & Company, PNC Financial Services, Truist, U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo. They want to know whether, or to what extent, the firms voluntarily worked with the FBI to collect Americans’ private data.

“The Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government are conducting oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its receipt of information about American citizens from private entities,” the GOP lawmakers wrote. “An FBI whistleblower has disclosed that following 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 FBI refused to comment.

The Washington Times reached out to the banks for comment but did not hear back immediately from most of the institutions.

Wells Fargo refused to comment.

Mr. Jordan and Mr. Massie told the financial giants that the committee is evaluating whether additional banking institutions similarly provided federal law enforcement with private customer data without any legal process.

The Republican lawmakers detailed transcribed testimony from late May of retired FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst George Hill, who said Bank of America, “with no directive from the FBI, data-mined its customer base” and compiled a list of customers who used their debit and credit card transactions between Jan. 5 and Jan. 7, 2021, and had purchased a firearm.

Mr. Hill also testified that the list BoA provided had targeted transactions in Washington, D.C. and the surrounding area.

“Mr. Hill’s testimony was later corroborated by his former supervisor, Special Agent-inCharge of the Boston Field Office, Joseph Bonavolonta,” the lawmakers wrote. “Mr. Bonavolonta testified that ’in essence’ BoA provided an ’aggregated … list of individuals that were supposedly living up in the New England area who … either had potentially made … certain credit card purchases … for hotel reservations or plane tickets, or potential purchases at certain gun stores’ on or around January 6, 2021. Mr. Bonavolonta also stated that the customer data was sent to other FBI field offices across the country.”

The lawmakers told the banks, “We find this testimony alarming. According to veteran FBI employees, without any legal process, a major financial institution provided the private financial information of Americans to the most powerful law enforcement entity in the country,” Mr. Massie and Mr. Jordan wrote.

“This information appears to have had no individualized nexus to particularized criminal conduct but was rather a data dump of customers’ transactions over a three-day period. This information undoubtedly included private details about individuals who had nothing at all to do with the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

Mr. Massie and Mr. Jordan called on each bank to provide documents and communications from Jan. 1, 2021, to the present between each respective institution, their employees, or consultants about providing financial records to federal law enforcement entities, including but not limited to the FBI, concerning the use of their banking products between Jan. 5, 2021, and Jan. 7, 2021, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.