It’s now being revealed by the House Judiciary Committee that the Biden administration spied on the private financial data of Americans after January 6th, using that as the impetus to convince banks to voluntarily hand over information using anti-conservative and anti-Christian based keywords and searches.
The Treasury and the FBI then used the information to begin other investigations even though no crimes had been committed.
Here’s more via Fox News:
A new report from the House Judiciary Committee and its Weaponization Subcommittee revealed that the federal government conducted “broad” and “unjustified” surveillance of Americans’ private financial data through financial institutions, while suggesting banks use information from anti-conservative organizations’ lists of “hate symbols” to determine potential persons of interest.
Fox News Digital first obtained the committee’s report, titled “Financial Surveillance in the United States: How Federal Law Enforcement Commandeered Financial Institutions to Spy on Americans.”
“The Committee on the Judiciary and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government are charged by the House of Representatives with upholding fundamental American civil liberties,” the report states. “As a part of this mission, the Committee and Select Subcommittee have uncovered startling evidence that the federal government was engaged in broad financial surveillance, prying into the private transactions of American consumers.”
The report states that the “financial surveillance was not predicated on any specific evidence of particularized criminal conduct and, even worse, it keyed on terms and specific transactions that concerned core political and religious expression protected by the Constitution.”
Fox News Digital first reported that following the events of Jan. 6, 2021, federal law enforcement officials from the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the FBI initiated multiple discussions with financial institutions.
“These meetings were geared toward discussing options for financial institutions to share customer information voluntarily with federal law enforcement outside of normal legal process,” the report states.
The Biden administration warned banks “that purchases of religious texts could indicate extremism…”
Fox News Digital first reported that federal investigators asked banks to search and filter customer transactions by using terms like “MAGA” and “Trump,” and warned that purchases of “religious texts” could indicate “extremism.” Fox News Digital also first reported that the officials suggested that banks query transactions with keywords like Dick’s Sporting Goods, Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops and more.
Fox News Digital also first reported that additional search terms included: “White Power,” “Camp Auschwitz,” “Antifa,” “Proud B,” “Storm, the,” “Capitol,” “Groyper Army,” “Threepers,” “boogaloo,” “civil war,” “last sons,” “kill,” “shoot,” “gun,” “death,” “murder,” “Biden,” “Kamala,” “Pelosi,” “Schumer” and “Pence.”
“Despite these transactions having no criminal nexus, FinCEN seems to have adopted a characterization of these Americans as potential threat actors and subject to surveillance,” the report states.
A source familiar with the documents held by the House Judiciary Committee told Fox News Digital that while Jan. 6, 2021, was the “impetus” for the queries and searches, the documents the committee has obtained do not reveal any specific time frames or limitations for banks searching customer transactions with the terms. The source said the federal government used the information for investigations beyond Jan. 6.
It is unclear if the terms are still being used by banks to search private transactions.
Meanwhile, the report revealed that FinCEN, in a January 16, 2021 email, shared with financial institutions a hyperlink to “relevant terms” from the Anti-Defamation League website. The report refers to the ADL as a “notorious anti-conservative activist group.”
“In advance of today’s discussion, we have attached a slide from FinCEN containing some key terms applicable to matters related to racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism (REMVE), which may have application to the capitol riots and related activity,” the email from FinCEN states. FinCEN added that “many additional relevant terms maybe found on the Anti-Defamation League website.”
The report states the “hate symbols” that ADL recommended monitoring included the “Celtic Cross,” the “Okay Hand Gesture,” “Pepe the Frog,” and “White Lives Matter” as hate symbols.
According to the report itself, the banks or financial institutions involved in this were “Barclays, U.S. Bank, Charles Schwab, HSBC, BoA, Paypal, KeyBank, Standard Chartered, Western Union, Wells Fargo, Citibank, Santander, JPMorgan Chase, and MUFG.”
Here’s the full report below:
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