The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government has published a new report revealing that standard conservative views are considered “extreme” by the federal government. The report states that the government has asked banks and financial institutions to monitor and report on customers who support gun rights and oppose the Biden administration’s open border policies.
The Subcommittee’s investigation began last May when House Republicans discovered that the Bank of America had voluntarily offered information on customers who were in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021. FBI whistleblowers said the bank also highlighted those who had used debit or credit cards to purchase a firearm in the preceding weeks.
The whistleblowers added that this information was obtained without warrants, probable cause, or any constitutional protections afforded to American citizens as a matter of course.
House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan called the revelations “alarming” and said the Treasury Department’s Office of Stakeholder Integration and Engagement in the Strategic Operations of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) distributed guidance materials to banks with suggested terms to use in search of notable transactions. Terms included “Trump” and “MAGA.”
In March, Mr. Jordan announced he had written to the online ticketing site Eventbrite and the fundraising resource GoFundMe to inform them that the Weaponization Committee was investigating them. He asked both companies to hand over any communications with the federal government and claimed he had seen evidence that federal agencies approached them after January 6.
Republicans established the Weaponization subcommittee in January 2023 under the firm belief that federal agencies are targeting conservatives and attempting to silence them. In 2022, following the FBI raid of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in search of classified documents, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy took to Twitter to inform the public that if Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, they would “conduct immediate oversight” of the FBI, and other federal agencies, and would “leave no stone unturned.”
