Indicted in Georgia, recommended for disbarment in California, force-retired from Chapman law school, called “an embarrassment” by the University of Colorado’s board of regents, his children forced to beg for cash to support their Christlike father, mocked for his wide-brimmed fedora (or is it a narrow-brimmed stetson?) … how much worse can things get for super couper John Eastman?
THIS GUY!
Now the big brain behind Trump’s fake electors plot and Ginni Thomas’s BFF has gone a-whining to the Daily Caller that Bank of America abruptly shut down his accounts last September. So he switched his accounts to USAA, and they shut him down too! Whatever for? Could it be because he’s overdrawn? He was just complaining about owing a million bucks in legal fees, after all. Or maybe that he’s been indicted for fraud and some other stuff? Or perhaps he’s been engaged in other suspicious financial activity? Nah, must be because the multibillion behemoth banks that charge $35 for a bounced check are too “woke”!
It’s true. Every time you go in these days the teller is too busy installing LED light bulbs, reading Chinua Achebe, or composting old yogurt to help you fill out a deposit slip. I don’t want to learn about post-Colonial diaspora, I just want a roll of quarters, damn!
USAA and BoA won’t comment as to why they declined to retain Eastman as a client, of course, confidentiality and all, but he is sure he knows why anyway. “I’m 99.9% confident” it was for political reasons, he griped to Daily Caller’s Reagan Reese. “What I don’t know is whether they didn’t want to do business with me, or whether they didn’t want to continue to be hassled by federal regulators for doing business with me. I don’t know which of those two it is, either one of them is rather despicable.”
Perhaps it would help him to think of his accounts like a big, gay rainbow wedding cake, and Bank of America as the baker who doesn’t want to pipe “congratulations, Steve and Charlie” on top!
BoA has been in right-wing crosshairs since it announced in 2018 that it wouldn’t lend to companies that manufacture military-style weapons. But they really betrayed the Right when the bank offered information about suspicious activity of potential Capitol rioters to Homeland Security and the FBI after January 6, like they were legally obligated to do. Thanks to the Patriot Act and Bank Secrecy Act (guess which party was responsible for both of those?) banks are required to report suspicious financial activity, the feds don’t have to get a warrant if terrorism is involved, and the bank is not allowed to tell a customer if the feds have been nosing around in their financial records, either.
So in the weeks following the terrorist activity of January 6, BoA and other financial institutions duly supplied the FBI and the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network whatever information they were asking for. In BoA’s case, it was lists of account holders who used a BoA credit or debit card in DC between January 5 and January 7, 2021, cross-referenced by people who had also purchased a firearm. And just like that, Republicans were big mad at law enforcement being “commandeered” for “surveillance” and “prying,” releasing an indignant report.
As if the whole “Patriot Act” thing wasn’t Dubya and Cheney’s idea, and this all hasn’t been going on for decades by now. After September 11, conservatives couldn’t trade “privacy” for “security” fast enough, and anyone who disagreed was a Saddam Hussein-hugging hippie who hated America and should shut their facehole, and why would anyone need privacy if they aren’t doing anything wrong? Maybe if you’re worried about privacy it’s because you’re doing something wrong? But all the sudden now the party of law and order has a problem with their own laws.
Earlier this week,15 conservative state attorneys general led by Kansas’s Kris Kobach also fired off an Angry Karen letter to the Bank of America’s manager and issued a breathless press release, “New Report Exposes Massive Government Surveillance of Americans' Financial Data,” squealing that it is “outrageous” that the bank had profiled “conservative and religious Americans as potential domestic terrorists” and is “punishing” them. LOL.
Kobach and the AsG are also hollering “religious discrimination” that BoA “de-banked” two evangelical Christian missionary groups, Timothy Two Project International and Servants of Christ’s Indigenous Advance Ministries, claiming that they don’t do business with “small businesses operating outside the United States” which “no longer aligns with the bank’s risk tolerance.” Kobach is sure that the bank is opting not to work with two groups that regularly send money to countries like Pakistan and Uganda not because of financial risk, but instead because the two churches represent a “trend” of anti-Christian discrimination. Of course.
Is John Eastman the latest victim of these woke banks? He would like you to think so! And for you to send him more money, of course. Mister Attorney, Grifting Again!
Things did not develop quite as Eastman expected.
"banks that charge $35 for a bounced check are too “woke”"
That is terrible. I guess people who are not eligible for credit unions?