The Treasury Department, on behalf of federal law enforcement officials after January 6, 2021 demanded banks to monitor customer transactions to find signs that indicate “extremism,” such as purchases of “small arms” or from gun dealers Dick’s Sporting Goods, Bass Pro Shop or Cabela’s as per House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).
Jordan made the revelations on Thursday in a note to the Director who was once of Treasury Department’s Office in charge of Stakeholder Integration and Engagement in the Strategic Operations Division of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) Noah Bishoff.
Jordan’s letter, which requested Bishoff to be present to a transcript of the interview included the following “This kind of pervasive financial surveillance, carried out in coordination with and at the request of federal law enforcement, into Americans’ private transactions is alarming and raises serious doubts about FinCEN’s respect for fundamental civil liberties.”
The requests were discovered in the Judiciary Committee and Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the weaponization of Federal Government oversight on federal law enforcement’s obtaining of information on American citizens who are not subject to legal processes.
Jordan stated in the document that Committee and Select Subcommittee obtained documents that indicated that on the 6th of January, 2021 FinCEN issued materials to banks that detailed what they called “Typologies” of “various persons of interest” and also provided banks with search terms suggested as well as Merchant Category Codes (MCCs) to track transactions for Federal law enforcement.
Jordan said that the documents contained documents that recommend that people use generic phrases such as “TRUMP” and “MAGA” to “Search Zelle payment messages,” and the “prior FinCEN analysis” of “Lone Actor/Homegrown Violent Extremism Indicators.”
Based on the report, FinCEN warned financial institutions of “extremism” indicators that include “Transportation costs, like rental cars, bus tickets or tickets to planes. For travel to places that have no purpose” as well as the acquisition of bookswhich include religious textsand subscriptions to other media that contain extreme views.
“In other words, FinCEN urged large financial institutions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression,” Jordan wrote.
Jordan claimed that FinCEN also released slides created by one bank that explain how other banks can use MCCs to identify customers whose transactions could be indicative of “potential active shooters”which could contain dangerous International Terrorists / Domestic Terrorists and Homegrown Extremists (‘Lone Wolves ‘).”
The slides advised banks to check for transactions using specific MCC codes, such as “3484: Small Arms,” “5091: Sporting and Recreational Goods and Supplies,” and the words “Cabela’s,” and “Dick’s Sporting Goods,” as well as many others, he added.
The letter also included the slide that listed a variety of gun dealers.
“Despite these transactions having no apparent criminal nexus and, in fact, relate to Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights– FinCEN seems to have adopted a characterization of these Americans as potential threat actors,” he stated.
An interview on Fox News’ Sean Hannity Jordan called it “financial surveillance.”
“In the last year saw we’ve exposed the censorship, where you had big government, big tech, big media, big academia working to censor Americans,” Jordan stated. “Now we have financial surveillance, where it’s big government working with big banks, big corporations to surveil — to spy on Americans.”
“And so it was big banks, looking and searching private transactions using key terms at the suggestion of the federal government to find out what you’re buying, what you’re spending your money on,” the source said. “Scary stuff, all, it looks like, without any warrant, without any legal process.”
“It’s frightening things. It’s a form of financial surveillance on the American population,” he stated.