On Thursday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) announced that they sent a letter to Bank of America (BoA) CEO Brian Moynihan demanding information and communications between BoA, the FBI, and the Department of Justice related to the events of January 6, 2021.
Last week, the House Judiciary Committee and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released a report highlighting whistleblower testimony claiming that BoA provided the FBI—voluntarily and without any legal process—with a list of individuals who had made transactions in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area with a BoA credit or debit card between January 5 and January 7, 2021.
The report also suggests that individuals who had previously purchased a firearm with a BoA product were elevated to the top of the list regardless of when or where the purchase was made.
According to the letter, retired FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst George Hill testified that:
“The Bank of America, with no directive from the FBI, data-mined its customer base. And they data-mined a date range of 5 to 7 January [of 2021] any BOA customer who used a BOA product. And by ‘BOA product,’ I mean a debit card or a credit card. They compiled that list. And then, on top of that list, they put anyone who had purchased a firearm during any date. So it was a huge list”. . . .
Mr. Hill’s testimony was corroborated by the testimony of his former supervisor, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Boston Field Office, Joseph Bonavolonta, the congressmen say.
"This testimony is alarming. According to veteran FBI employees, BoA provided, without any legal process, private financial information of Americans to the most powerful law-enforcement entity in the country,” the letter states:
“This information appears to have had no individualized nexus to particularized criminal conduct, but was rather a data dump of BoA customers’ transactions over a three-day period. This information undoubtedly included private details about BoA customers who had nothing at all to do with the events of January 6.
“Even worse, BoA specifically provided information about Americans who exercised their Second Amendment right to purchase a firearm.”
In their letter, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jordan and Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust Chairman Massie direct the Bank of America CEO to provide documents and information relating to their inquiry by June 8, 2023.