ICYMI: Former U.S. Sen. Toomey for Fox News: “Here’s What Can Be Done About Debanking, The Un-American Abuse Of Power By Regulators”

“This unauthorized, unaccountable abuse of power by financial regulators to force banks to debank whole industries is outrageous.”

In case you missed it, AFFM advisor and former U.S. Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) recently penned an op-ed in Fox News outlining the issue of debanking and regulators’ abuse of power. In his piece, Toomey, who served as Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, outlined the dangers of debanking and offered solutions to combat the issue.

He began by acknowledging the resurgence of the debanking conversation in Washington, spurred by President Trump’s comments at the World Economic Forum, in addition to dialogue on the Joe Rogan podcast and congressional hearings. He then delved into the root of debanking itself, stating, “I can confirm debanking is real. But it is not driven by the banks themselves…. Debanking is almost entirely driven by vague and excessively broad regulation, or downright regulatory malfeasance.”

Toomey goes on to explain the tremendous and archaic regulatory pressures banks face and the resulting consequences. “A bank that erringly provides services to a customer who later is determined to be a criminal can be subject to enormous fines while its senior management can be subject to civil and criminal liability. Naturally, banks err on the side of caution,” he explains.

He then outlines how “rogue regulators” under the Obama years abused their powers through what is known now as Operation Chokepoint, where “financial regulators were pressuring the banks they regulated to debank industries that were disfavored by the administration…. They simply had animus toward certain legal businesses and used the enormous power they wield over banks to try to kill those businesses, often upending people’s lives in the process.” While Operation Chokepoint informally concluded at the start of the first Trump administration, the playbook used by holdover regulators to target politically unfavorable industries remained. Toomey describes a second variant of the illicit abuse of power resurfacing in 2021 under President Biden, this time targeting the crypto industry.

This time around, Toomey says lawmakers in Washington responsible for oversight were ready and are taking action to correct these past wrongdoings and set the guidelines to prevent any ideologically targeted debanking from happening again in the future. He offers a handful of actionable solutions for Congress and the Trump administration to enact to “ensure that financial regulators never weaponize America’s banks against legitimate businesses again.” These include solutions such as “[enhancing] accountability of banking regulators and supervisors by increasing transparency and modernize archaic laws like the Anti-Money Laundering Act,” and noting that “Congress and state governments, should refrain from sweeping mandates on banks that would forbid banks’ necessary, sometimes subjective, judgments regarding matters that are not always quantifiable.”

Toomey concludes his piece by calling on the current Administration and Congress to address the issue: “The real debanking problem has been the excessive powers concentrated among unaccountable bureaucrats. Last November’s electoral sweep presents a great opportunity for President Trump and a Republican Congress to clean up the mess.”

To read the full piece on Fox News, click HERE.

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