Gary Bauer: Democrats and Debanking

Top executives at the biggest banks in America just admitted to Fox News that they did in fact debank conservatives. They did so under pressure from President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden.
 
This is an extremely important story, and it’s another indication of the relentless attempt by the Left and the leaders of the Democrat Party to make it impossible for conservatives and Christians to exist as an effective force in America.
 
The neo-Marxist Left doesn’t want us to be able to advocate our values, to have organizations, or to be able to challenge them in any meaningful way. Choking off financial support is an effective method of control.
 
Here’s what is going on.
 
Banks do debank individuals and organizations. If they think someone is a serious credit risk, they can deny that person a loan. They may close an account if they suspect your deposits are the result of money laundering or other criminal activity. There is nothing unusual about that.
 
But in recent years, federal bank regulators added another reason for debanking — “reputational risk.” For example, if an individual or a group threatened the professional reputation of the bank, they should be debanked.
 
So, if a bank loans money to a firearms manufacturer, leftist regulators might say, “You really ought to think twice about that loan because the public (liberals) may hate your bank.”
 
If a bank works with a conservative group that the Left claims is homophobic, that bank might face greater scrutiny from leftist regulators.
 
The obvious problem with such a policy is that it is totally subjective and ripe for abuse.
 
 
 
Political Pressure
 
One banking executive told Fox News, “Those pressures were very, very real. When your regulator gives you a suggestion, it’s not a suggestion; it’s an order. The political stuff is very real; those pressures are real.”
 
Bank CEOs have been repeatedly asked about this practice in recent years, and they denied it ever happened. But we knew it was happening.
 
It happened to former Ambassador Sam Brownback’s religious freedom organization.
 
It happened to Mike Lindell.
 
It happened to Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
 
Now lower-level executives are admitting it because they were afraid of what liberal bureaucrats in Democrat administrations might do to them.
 
In fact, the banks were so afraid that they even tried to deny services to the leading family of the conservative movement — the Trump family.
 
This sort of thing has happened for years in totalitarian countries like communist China, Cuba, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela.
 
Now it’s happening in Western countries. It’s happening here. And it happened in Canada, where the leftist Trudeau regime seized the bank accounts of truckers protesting oppressive COVID rules.
 
One final thought: The pattern is clear. Debanking happened under Barack Obama. It got worse under Joe Biden.
 
What do you think would be happening now if Kamala Harris were sitting in the Oval Office? What do you think will happen if Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wins in 2028?