(April 21): US President Donald Trump’s lawyer said JPMorgan Chase & Co chief executive officer Jamie Dimon can’t “escape liability” for allegedly blacklisting the president after Jan 6, 2021.
Trump claims that Dimon personally directed the bank to drop him as a client and then added his name to an industry “blacklist” in violation of a Florida unfair practices law. The president’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, reasserted the allegation in a Monday filing urging a judge to keep the “debanking” case in the Sunshine state.
JPMorgan, which is seeking to move the case to New York, says Trump has advanced no evidence of Dimon’s role or whether the alleged blacklist even exists. Even if Trump had provided such evidence, the account agreements he signed as a JPMorgan client still require disputes be litigated in New York, the bank has said.
The suit is part of Trump’s campaign against banks that he says have wrongfully denied services to conservatives. JPMorgan and Capital One Financial Corp both closed accounts held by Trump or his businesses shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, though neither bank has given specific reasons for closing the accounts.
JPMorgan in March moved the case to the Miami Federal Court from the state court and is now trying to transfer it to the US District Court in Manhattan. But Trump is fighting to move the case back to the state court based on Dimon’s alleged actions.
In Monday’s filing, Brito acknowledged that highly regulated financial institutions may be exempt from civil suits under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. But no court has held the law “automatically exempts a bank CEO from liability”, the lawyer said.
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The bank’s theories to the contrary “fall short of filling this gaping hole in their arguments”, the lawyer said.
JPMorgan declined to comment on Trump’s latest filing. The bank has previously denied closing Trump’s accounts for improper purposes.
“We do close accounts because they create legal or regulatory risk for the company,” JPMorgan said after the suit was filed. “We regret having to do so but often rules and regulatory expectations lead us to do so.”
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The judge could rule on JPMorgan’s request to move the case to New York at any time.
Uploaded by Tham Yek Lee
