(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The House Weaponization Subcommittee issued a subpoena to Citibank on Thursday as GOP legislators widen their probe into the FBI’s collection of the bank records of peaceful protestors who were at Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021.
The Weaponization Subcommittee’s probe was initially launched in May, after it was revealed that Bank of America, provided the financial information of J6 protestors voluntarily and with no warrant.
The subcommittee’s Thursday letter said that investigators have received documents, which raise suspicions that Citibank also provided information to the FBI.
“In particular, these documents indicate that a Citibank representative was included on emails and Zoom discussions organized by the FBI and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) focused on ‘identifying the best approach to information sharing, both strategic and operational,’ in the wake of the events of January 6,” the letter said.
“These documents suggest that the executive branch was brainstorming informal methods—outside of legal process—for obtaining private customer information from financial institutions.”
The subcommittee’s subpoena seeks to discover the extent to which Citibank worked with the FBI to collect Americans’ financial data. The letter said Citibank declined to comply with the committee’s voluntary requests, which is why the subpoena is necessary.
The information about Bank of America providing information to the FBI was revealed by bureau whistleblower George Hill, who said that the financial institution “voluntarily and without any legal process” funneled to the agency “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.”
Hill also indicated that the bank investigated customers who bought weapons during that time frame.
“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,” said Hill, who has been corroborated by his former supervisor, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Boston Field Office Joseph Bonavolonta.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
