From Jeff Childers<\/p>\n
\tAmerica\u2019s largest bank spent the last five years denying it did exactly what everyone knew it did. Yesterday, JPMorgan Chase finally ran out of consequence-free lying room. The Associated Press ran the story, headlined, \u201cJPMorgan concedes it closed Trump\u2019s accounts after Jan. 6 attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
JPMorgan Chase acknowledged for the first time that it shut down dozens of Trump accounts \u2014personal and business\u2014 in February 2021, right after January 6th. The accounts included Trump hotels, housing developments, retail shops in IL, FL, and NY, plus Trump\u2019s personal private banking account handling his inheritance from his father. The closing letter, which directed him to \u201cfind a more suitable institution,\u201d signed off with \u201cThank you for your attention to this matter,\u201d<\/strong> which has ironically become Trump\u2019s favorite phrase.<\/p>\n President Trump did find a more suitable institution: state court in South Florida.<\/p>\n The one-line concession made news because, until yesterday, JPMorgan had stubbornly refused to admit it yanked the President\u2019s accounts after January 6th. The bank, playing it coy, would only offer foggy hypotheticals about when it generally does and doesn\u2019t close accounts, hiding behind the skirts of bank privacy laws. We can neither confirm nor deny\u2026<\/p>\n But in a recent motion arguing for moving the case from Florida state court to a federal court in New York, the mega-bank was forced to strategically concede what Trump has claimed all along\u2014 that it did in fact close his accounts. \u201cIn February 2021, JPMorgan informed Plaintiffs that certain accounts maintained with JPMorgan\u2019s CB and PB would be closed,\u201d the bank\u2019s new filing admitted.<\/p>\n It was legal chess, or at least checkers. Conceding that point sacrificed a pawn to potentially shift the locus of harm from Florida to New York, where the bank is headquartered. Under the law of venue \u2014the choice of lawsuit location\u2014 most cases must be filed where an injury occurred. That\u2019s why the bank\u2019s previous refusal to even admit that any harm occurred left the bank vulnerable to accepting Trump\u2019s version of events.<\/p>\n Trump sued JPMorgan Chase and its CEO, Jamie Dimon (personally), for $5 billion in damages based primarily on three claims: trade libel (think defamation), Florida\u2019s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act (skeevy or unethical conduct), and for breaching Trump\u2019s accountholder agreements (bad faith contracting).<\/p>\n Five billion in damages would sting, even for JPMorgan. Red Florida juries aren\u2019t likely to be sympathetic about J6 debanking, so you can easily understand why the bank made this early admission\u2014 it\u2019s desperate to get the case as far away from Trump\u2019s home court as possible. It\u2019s deeply cynical, though. Fine, we did it, okay? But we did it in New York, so we can only be sued there.<\/p>\n Confessing sin is good for the soul.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know what the judge will do, especially in a hyper-political case like this. Nobody can sensibly predict anything. But if the case stays in South Florida, JPMorgan will have a pretty hot time. I can\u2019t predict the judicial decision, but I can see the outlines of a generous settlement looming in the bank\u2019s future. Thank you for your attention to this matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From Jeff Childers America\u2019s largest bank spent the last five years denying it did exactly what everyone knew it did. Yesterday, JPMorgan Chase finally ran out of consequence-free lying room. The Associated Press ran the story, headlined, \u201cJPMorgan concedes it … Continue reading