Bank of America Handed FBI Payment Records Of People In DC On January 6th, Whether They Were A Suspect Or Not

At a committee hearing, Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) said that Bank of America provided customers’ financial and transaction data to the FBI regardless of their involvement in the Jan. 6 riot. In 2021, reports emerged that the Bank of America, the second largest bank in the country, provided the FBI with transactional and financial data without the consent or knowledge of customers. The bank reviewed customer records to flag customers who were in DC between January 5 and January 6, those who booked a hotel or AirBnB in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area after the riot, those who purchased airline-related services around that time, and those who bought firearms around that time. This amounts to widespread warrantless data collection on people that haven’t yet been a suspect in a crime. The bank flagged 211 people but only one was interrogated by the FBI. As Fox News reported at the time: “It’s not even clear that what Bank of America did is even legal. We spoke to a number of lawyers about this, 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. One knowledgeable attorney pointed us to 12 U.S.C. 3403. That’s a federal law that allows banks to tip off the feds to any information that “may be relevant to a possible violation of any statute or regulation.” At a House committee hearing earlier this week, Congressman Bishop said that Bank of…Bank of America Handed FBI Payment Records Of People In DC On January 6th, Whether They Were A Suspect Or Not