JPMorgan Chase Honcho Jamie Dimon’s Lawyers Gave a Judge One Excuse for Debanking Trump and It’s an Insult

JPMorgan Chase ordered Donald Trump to pull his money out of its bank after January 6.

Trump sued for five billion dollars, and the bank's lawyers finally answered in Manhattan federal court.

Their main argument hinges on one detail about Trump's money that should make every Chase customer furious.

Chase Says One Open Account Means Trump Was Never Debanked

The letters went out in February 2021.

Trump, his family business and a string of affiliated companies were told their accounts were being shut down.

Trump later said the bank gave him roughly 20 days to relocate hundreds of millions of dollars.

Days before filing suit in January 2026, he blasted the bank on Truth Social for "incorrectly and inappropriately DEBANKING me."

A month later, JPMorgan admitted in a court filing that it closed Trump's accounts shortly after January 6.

The case started in Florida state court and has since landed in the Southern District of New York.

In a new filing, JPMorgan's lawyers told the judge Trump's claims "fail – multiple times over – and should be dismissed with prejudice."

The bank says one of Trump's personal accounts is still open.

It also points out that several of the other plaintiffs have since opened new accounts at Chase.

In other words, Jamie Dimon's legal team wants a judge to believe you can't be debanked if the bank left one door cracked open.

That's like a landlord evicting your whole family and bragging that he let you keep the mailbox.

JPMorgan's lawyers went further.

They claim no blacklist like the one Trump describes even exists.

They argue the account agreements let the bank shut down accounts for any reason at all.

They say the clock has already run out on key claims, and they want Dimon personally dropped from the case.

Federal Regulators Found the Pattern Trump Described

Hours after that filing, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released a 47-page report faulting the nine largest banks it oversees.

JPMorgan Chase was the biggest bank on the list.

The report didn't rule on Trump's case, but it laid out the same kind of treatment he says he got.

All nine banks, the OCC found, carried policies that could lock customers out of financial services from 2020 through September 2025.

A bank-owned payment processor shut down a merchant selling MAGA merchandise in February 2021 – the same month Trump's letters went out.

Another bank flagged partisan groups as high risk by default and refused to serve customers over views the Constitution protects, a policy that stayed on the books until 2025.

Gun sellers, coal producers, oil and gas companies and detention facilities all landed on restricted lists.

Comptroller Jonathan Gould said the review produced "irrefutable evidence that the nation's largest banks have denied, debanked and discriminated against customers."

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott blasted the findings as proof that banks punished Americans for their faith and their politics.

JPMorgan answered by blaming years of regulators second-guessing banks for making the whole industry gun-shy.

The Justice Department has also subpoenaed JPMorgan in a federal debanking investigation.

From Operation Choke Point to Closed Trump Accounts

None of this started in 2021.

Under Barack Obama, the Justice Department ran Operation Choke Point, billed as an "anti-fraud initiative."

Republicans saw it as a shakedown aimed at gun retailers and other legal businesses Democrats wanted gone.

Trump's Justice Department shut it down in 2017.

The big banks learned the lesson anyway.

Cut off the customers Washington frowns on, and call it reputation risk.

Capital One shut down more than 300 Trump Organization accounts, and the company took that bank to court in March 2025.

Melania Trump wrote in her memoir that her bank account was closed too.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier opened a probe into JPMorgan in November 2025, according to the Daily Caller.

Trump signed an executive order in August 2025 ordering regulators to stop politically motivated account closures, and the OCC report is the first proof the order has teeth.

Fine Print Is All Jamie Dimon Has Left

Strip away the legal jargon, and Chase's defense comes down to a contract clause and one account it never got around to closing.

That isn't a defense of how Chase treated Trump – it's proof the bank picked which accounts to kill.

When Trump first threatened to sue, Chase spokeswoman Trish Wexler said the bank shares the view that politics and religion are no reason to close an account.

Now its lawyers are leaning on fine print that lets Chase drop customers for whatever reason it chooses.

A bank that never played politics wouldn't need to hide behind that clause.

If Jamie Dimon's bank could show Donald Trump the door, every gun shop owner, coal operator and MAGA t-shirt seller in America already knows what chance they had.

A federal judge in Manhattan now decides whether Trump gets his day in court, and the OCC handed his lawyers a roadmap.

Sources:

• Dan Ennis, "Dive Deposits: New Venue, but JPMorgan Still Wants Trump Suit Tossed," Banking Dive, October 15, 2026.
• New York Post, "JPMorgan Says Trump Still Has a Personal Bank Account as It Seeks to Toss $5B 'Debanking' Lawsuit," New York Post, October 15, 2026.
• Greg Norman-Diamond and Preston Mizell, "US Debanking Investigation Finds Customers Shut Out Over Political Views," Fox Business, October 14, 2026.
• Zach LaChance, "JPMorgan Admits It Closed Trump's Accounts Shortly After Jan. 6," Washington Examiner, February 21, 2026.
• Mark Tanos, "Trump Says He's Suing JPMorgan Chase for De-Banking Him," The Daily Caller, January 17, 2026.
• Michael Dorgan, "Trump Says He Will Sue JPMorgan Chase Over 'Incorrect' Post-Jan 6 Debanking," Fox Business, January 17, 2026.
• Joseph Lawler, "Trump Ends Obama's Operation Choke Point," Washington Examiner, August 18, 2017.