(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) The House Judiciary Committee and the Weaponization Subcommittee have quantified outgoing President Joe Biden’s astonishing weaponizing of the banking system to spy on Americans. The figures are staggering.
According to an interim report released on Dec. 6, over 14,000 federal agents accessed sensitive financial information of Americans, resulting in 3.3 million warrantless searches in 2023 alone.
This massive surveillance was made possible by the FBI’s alleged manipulation of the Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) filing process, which allowed agents to use financial institutions as their “de facto arms of law enforcement.”
The FBI repeatedly issued “requests” without any legal process, targeting individuals or activities it deemed “suspicious.”
More than 14,000 government employees accessed Americans' private financial data over 3 MILLION times.
Without a warrant.
Read @JudiciaryGOP's report on Biden's FBI spying on Americans' bank accounts. https://t.co/0b2p3npH92
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) December 9, 2024
For example, following Jan. 6, 2021, the FBI colluded with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to lure banks to comb through data and file SARs on hundreds of Americans.
In 2023, banks filed 4.6 million SARs and 20.8 million Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs) with FinCEN. FinCEN granted unlimited access to this information, also known as BSA data, to 25,000 government agents.
It all started after a whistleblower told the Committee that following January 6, Bank of America (BoA) voluntarily provided the FBI with a list of individuals who used BoA cards in the DC area during that time—𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐥𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬.
— Weaponization Committee (@Weaponization) December 6, 2024
According to the 47-page report, 27,000 federal officials have access to BSA data through the Agency Integrated Access (AIA) program.
To expedite this surveillance further, financial institutions are “expanding” artificial intelligence to enhance their ability to sift through the data.
The Weaponization Subcommittee found this information following the shocking testimony from a whistleblower.
Among the banks now under congressional investigation are Bank of America, Chase, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, CitiBank, Truist, Charles Schwab, HSBC, MUFG, PayPal, Santander, Standard Chartered and Western Union.
“All Americans should be disturbed by how their financial data is collected, made accessible to, and searched by federal and state officials, including law enforcement and regulatory agencies,” the Weaponization Subcommittee stated.
It continued, “Absent renewed safeguards, the federal government and financial institutions will continue to siphon off Americans’ sensitive financial data, place it into the hands of bureaucrats, and erode any remaining semblance of financial privacy in the United States.”
