By Nupur Anand
NEW YORK, Sept 2 (Reuters) – A Democratic U.S. senator has pressed Capital One Financial for details about an internal anti-money-laundering review that the bank said last month led it to close accounts linked to President Donald Trump and his businesses.
In a letter sent to Capital One CEO Richard Fairbank on Tuesday evening and first reported by Reuters, Senator Maggie Hassan, a New Hampshire Democrat, asked for documents describing the transactions, alerts and other factors that prompted the review, as well as any communications with law enforcement or regulators related to the matter.
“The American people deserve to know,” wrote Hassan, the top Democrat on the Joint Economic Committee.
Capital One declined to comment.
A Trump Organization spokesperson called Capital One’s anti-money-laundering review baseless. The spokesperson said: “Capital One manufactured a post hoc rationale by selectively resurrecting a handful of isolated transactions that had occurred years earlier and had never once been identified as cause for concern. Those stale transactions were nothing more than a transparent pretext to conceal what was plainly a politically motivated decision to debank the Trump accounts.”
Spokespeople for the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
LAWSUIT ALLEGES POLITICAL MOTIVATION
The Trump Organization and Eric Trump, the president’s son, sued Capital One in March 2025, alleging the bank’s closure in 2021 of hundreds of affiliated accounts was politically motivated.
The U.S. bank has denied acting on political grounds. In a July court filing, it said the closures were the result of a careful review by Capital One’s AML team “in accordance with bank policies and regulatory guidance.” It has never accused the Trump Organization of money laundering. In a subsequent court filing, the plaintiffs said the AML review was pretextual.
If Capital One complies with Hassan’s request, it could shed further light on the financial dealings of the president’s companies, as well as whether the Trump Organization’s “debanking” allegations have merit.
Debanking — denying services on religious or political grounds — has gained prominence during Trump’s second term. The president and administration officials have amplified conservative claims that “woke” — or left-leaning — large financial institutions have targeted conservative-leaning individuals, groups and businesses by restricting access to banking services. The industry has said lenders merely followed federal regulations when closing accounts.
In August 2025, Trump signed an executive order aimed at curbing discriminatory debanking practices. He also sued JPMorgan Chase in January 2026 on similar grounds. The bank denies the claims. A top banking regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, is also probing the issue of debanking across several institutions.
In the letter to Capital One’s CEO, Hassan wrote that additional information is needed for congressional oversight.
The letter asked Capital One to identify the activity that triggered its review, explain the policies it applied, describe the findings that led to the account closures and, to the extent permitted by law, disclose any referrals or communications with federal or state authorities tied to the matter.
(Reporting by Nupur Anand in New York; Editing by Michelle Price, Rod Nickel and Matthew Lewis)
