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Capital One Financial Corp. said in a court filing late Friday that it closed accounts belonging to President Donald Trump’s sprawling real estate company in 2021 for legitimate reasons after an internal review by the bank’s anti-money laundering team.
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The lender made the revelation in a filing asking a judge to toss out a Trump Organization lawsuit accusing it of illegally “debanking” the president’s company because of political discrimination following the assault on the Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.
Capital One, which denies discriminating against Trump’s business, said the internal review was triggered by “transaction patterns” that “are among the types of activity flagged by federal banking guidance.” The bank said it’s only making the anti-money laundering review public now as a result of the litigation.
The filing does not give details about the transactions at issue or accuse Trump or his company of wrongdoing. The decision to close the accounts was made as part of a process involving the lender’s anti-money laundering professionals “with decades of law enforcement experience,” the bank said.
“Capital One never publicized the termination decision nor its confidential internal process giving rise to the closure, and it permitted plaintiffs several months (and granted several extensions) to find new banking services, which they did,” the bank said in the filing.
The case is part of a wave of lawsuits that Trump or his business interests have filed since he retook the White House last year, including another debanking lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase & Co. for closing Trump’s personal accounts in 2021.
In both cases, the banks say their customer agreements explicitly allow them to close accounts for any reason. JPMorgan also denies wrongdoing and is fighting that lawsuit.
“Capital One, along with other major banks, de-banked President Trump, his family, and his businesses for blatantly political reasons,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement. “President Trump’s powerful lawsuit holds Capital One accountable for its disgraceful conduct, and we look forward to seeing this matter through to a just and proper conclusion.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Capital One indicated in its Friday filing that lawyers for Trump’s company have said they could have explained the transactions identified as suspicious by the bank’s anti-money laundering – or AML – team, if they’d been asked to do so.
The bank said in a footnote of its filing that the Trump Organization has not alleged how such an explanation “would have altered Capital One’s determination or prevented the account closures.”
According to the bank, the Trump Organization has said it believes the explanation related to anti-money laundering was used as a cover by Capital One to justify closing the accounts for political reasons.
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The Trump Organization’s initial complaint against Capital One was dismissed earlier this year after the Miami federal judge handling the case said it lacked enough evidence of alleged political discrimination. But the judge gave the company a chance to refile a revised suit after seeking evidence from Capital One.
Filings from both sides of the case have highlighted the way federal rules have required banks to take action under compliance and anti-money laundering rules. The Trump administration has criticized some of those rules, saying they are harmful.
Capital One said in the filing that Trump’s company failed to present evidence of political discrimination, even after three months of receiving evidence from the bank.
“To the contrary, those documents and plaintiffs’ own allegations make clear that Capital One closed plaintiffs’ accounts for anti-money laundering reasons,” the bank said. “The closures were the result of months of analysis and a careful review” by the bank’s anti-money laundering team “in accordance with bank policies and regulatory guidance.”
The amended lawsuit, filed last month, includes a 10-page section titled “January 6, 2021: The Political Trigger” that’s entirely blacked out, making it impossible for now to see any evidence the Trump Organization may have obtained that allegedly ties the account closures to the attack on the Capitol.
A less-redacted version of the complaint may be filed soon after both sides agree on what can become public. Capital One on Friday asked that names of its employees who were involved in the matter continue to be redacted, citing the high-profile nature of the case.
Trump has frequently criticized debanking, describing it as a practice that wrongfully deprives conservative individuals and organizations of financial services.
Eric Trump, the president’s son and an executive vice president at the Trump Organization, is a plaintiff in the Capital One suit and has also been an outspoken critic of debanking. In March 2025, he said the account closures by Capital One were “a clear attack on free speech” that cost the company millions as it was forced to find a new bank.
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The case is Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust v. Capital One, 25-cv-21596, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida (Miami).
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