Megan Basham

So that's a key question here because the Trump team says that these closures were politically motivated, which would mean that any resulting harm on his business interests were unlawful.

But Diamond has consistently said that while J.P.

Morgan does debank people, it doesn't do so for political or ideological or religious reasons.

This is what he said on Fox just a couple of months ago.

Yeah.

So the note that JPMorgan Chase sent Trump in February 2021 said that he simply needed to find a, quote, more suitable institution.

Didn't specify a reason.

But JP Morgan has said that these decisions are based on whether accounts pose, quoting here, legal or regulatory risks.

And Diamond did hint in that Fox interview that government pressure, perhaps from an incoming Biden administration, may have played a role in the actions that the bank ultimately decided to take.

And then in addition to that, Georgia, I spoke with sources at J.P.

Morgan, and they told me that they often wish that they did not have to debank.

But after decades of experience dealing with regulators who are sometimes politically motivated, they've learned to anticipate certain pressure if they don't take those actions.

Yeah, already we're seeing some impact from the entire debate that's coming out because of Trump's accounts.

And I think because of his personal experience with this, he has moved on this issue.

So last year, he signed an executive order targeting what his administration called, quote unquote, politicized debanking.

And that order specifically sought to prohibit the use of vague reasons like reputational risk.

as a reason for closing down someone's account.

And as you heard there, Dimon actually said that he would like to see some further action in that direction just to clarify for the banks what they should and should not do.

So a lot of legal analysts say that the Trump case could have implications for how much banks are required to disclose when terminating services and also what legal recourse customers may have when they do feel that they've been treated unfairly.

Well, this is also in the bank's interest because it protects them as well.