The Liberal Gun Club Forum

According to The Hill, the DOJ encourages banks and third party payment processors to drop these high-risk clients by “flooding payments companies that provide processing service to those industries with subpoenas, civil investigative demands, and other burdensome and costly legal demands.” The American Banker reveals, in their timeline of Operation Choke Point, that the subpoena flood started shortly after Operation Choke Point’s inception in March 2013. The subpoenas went to banks and payment processors large and small: Everything from the $343 million-endowed National Bank of California to the $220 billion-endowed PNC Financial Services Group. By fall of 2013, the Justice Department had pressured some banks into settling with the government. The DOJ used these settlements as a template to further strongarm other banks into compliance. The DOJ is targeting 30 high-risk industries, as labeled by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in 2011, in a report titled “Managing Risks in Third-Party Payment Processor Relationships.”

DispositionMatrix wrote:Once the DOJ defined "high-risk merchant categories," it was just a matter of time before it would be used for morality policing and the like. Of course, they do not have explain why they are pressuring banks not to do business with FFLs, but I would like to see from where this directive came.

SunTrust Bank doesn't want Steve Champion's money because it doesn't like how he earns it.

Champion owns American Gun & Pawn in Brooksville.

The letter says their banking "relationship" "no longer meets the bank's corporate business objectives." It does not go into detail on why the decision was made.

senorgrand wrote:Good point. Any bank who took bailout money, declared bankruptcy or went through a forced-merger should be on the shit list too!

Aztex999 wrote:Ironic that the banks themselves are not considered "undesirable business ventures."

Aztex999 wrote:Haven't heard much about this in the year since the OP. Perhaps the banks realized, "Since when do we let government regulations get in the way of our greed?"

A bit of Googling indicates Operation Choke Point was pretty much shut down back in January. There will always be discrimination in banking, though; just no longer officially sanctioned by the FDIC and DOJ.

bigstones wrote:

senorgrand wrote:Good point. Any bank who took bailout money, declared bankruptcy or went through a forced-merger should be on the shit list too!

You left out laundering drug money.

Aztex999 wrote:Haven't heard much about this in the year since the OP. Perhaps the banks realized, "Since when do we let government regulations get in the way of our greed?"

A bit of Googling indicates Operation Choke Point was pretty much shut down back in January. There will always be discrimination in banking, though; just no longer officially sanctioned by the FDIC and DOJ.

CowboyT wrote:...then since this is a gun forum, we all should be behind that legislation that hoosier8 mentioned.

“The federal government should not be able to intimidate financial institutions into dropping entire sectors of the economy as customers based not on wrongdoing, but purely on personal and political motivations and without due process,” said Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.), the bill’s author.

The Obama administration issued a veto threat against the bill, saying that a new written material requirement would impede regulators’ ability to enforce financial laws.

“Restricting the federal banking agencies in this way could unnecessarily and dangerously hinder or compromise important law enforcement and national security efforts,” the White House said in a statement of administration policy.

The bill, called the Financial Institution Customer Protection Act, bans federal agencies that oversee banks from requesting or ordering banks to terminate customer accounts “unless the regulator has material reason.”

The measure also requires banking regulators to put in writing any “formal or informal” requests for account termination, and requires those regulators to file an annual report to Congress regarding those requests. To scale back Operation Choke Point or any similar initiatives, the bill also amends the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989.

Under Operation Choke Point, critics believe that government officials abused their authority by pressuring banks to close down the accounts of entire industries the Obama administration doesn’t like, such as firearms sellers and payday lenders.

Members of the ATM industry have alleged that the law causes harm to independent ATM operators who have had accounts closed without warning or justification.

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-MO, reintroduced The Financial Institution Consumer Protection Act of 2017 (H.R. 2706) in the current session of Congress.

A previous iteration, H.R.766 - Financial Institution Customer Protection Act of 2016, was passed by the house, and sent to the Senate where it died in committee.

Bay Area technology firms are discriminating against a Merced shop owner because he sells guns, according to his attorney.

Blair Gladwin, who has a federal license to sell firearms, filed a class action lawsuit this month against money transfer services PayPal, Stripe and Square for denying their online services to his shop, Gladwin Guns and Ammo in Merced.

The companies required Gladwin to disclose what his business sells and then terminated his account, according to the complaint filed in Merced County Superior Court. The companies do not allow the sale of guns, ammunition or other gun-related products, according to their respective policies.

senorgrand wrote:You can't make policy from selective use of regulations. That's all kinds of illegal.