Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen faces grilling on extensive program that allowed the feds to spy on thousands of Americans through bank transactions
DAILY MAIL — House Republicans pressed Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen Tuesday on her agency’s efforts to surveil Americans’ bank transactions after the January 6 riot.
The Treasury boss testified before the House Ways and Means Committee about President Joe Biden’s tax policies, but one GOP member took the opportunity to elicit information about other matters.
In February, Yellen testified before lawmakers and dodged their questions about the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s (FinCEN) attempts to have U.S. financial institutions send federal officials private customer data.
She told lawmakers then: ‘I promise a thorough look into everything.’
On Tuesday, Republican Rep. Greg Steube of Florida demanded answers from Yellen after she has had months to look into the secretive surveillance program.
‘I am now aware that there were communications that took place,’ Yellen said of the Treasury’s effort to have banks send private customer data to federal officials.
‘FinCEN worked as its instructed to do with financial institutions to try to uncover who was involved in January 6,’ Yellen continued.
‘In some cases, I believe financial institutions suggested to this group search terms they had used that had been helpful in identifying potential perpetrators of January 6,’ she testified about a group of financial institutions working with FinCen and the FBI.
When pressed by Steube on the Treasury’s suggestion that banks look up search terms like ‘MAGA’ and ‘Trump’ to identify extremism, she responded: ‘It’s a way of trying to narrow the scope of search for individuals who, based on other information available to the financial institutions, may have been guilty of illegal behavior.’
Her testimony confirmed that the FinCEN program was searching for individuals that could have been guilty of January 6 related crimes, though they had not been charged and warrants for their investigation were not obtained.
‘Through our work at the Weaponization Committee, we have uncovered that financial institutions are sending Americans’ information directly to the FBI, without a warrant,’ Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told DailyMail.com.
‘The FBI and FinCEN are using banks to engage in fishing expeditions without any link to criminal conduct.’
‘This should worry everyone, no matter the party, and Secretary Yellen should disavow this practice,’ Jordan continued.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, led by Jordan, is investigating ‘collusion’ between U.S. banks and federal agencies in the aftermath of the Capitol riot.
According to shocking committee reports, the Biden administration worked with banks to comb through ‘extremism’ indicators like the purchase of religious text, like a Bible, or searches including the terms ‘MAGA’ and ‘TRUMP.’
Last week, DailyMail.com was the first to reveal that at least 13 financial institutions are being investigated by Republicans in Congress for colluding with the federal government to spy on Americans after the January 6 protests looking for ‘extremism’ indicators.
Bank of America, Chase, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, Citi Bank, Truist, Charles Schwab, HSBC, MUFG, PayPal, Santander, Standard Chartered and Western Union are all under investigation for ties to an FBI and FinCEN plot to spy on Americans’ private banking transactions without first obtaining a warrant.
‘This kind of warrantless financial surveillance raises serious concerns about the federal government’s respect for Americans’ privacy and fundamental civil liberties,’ Jordan wrote in a letter to Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen, obtained last week by DailyMail.com.
FinCEN and the FBI received data on 211 individuals from the Bank of America in a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) on January 17, 2021, according to investigators,
But the SAR was only sent after the FBI and FinCEN deliberately requested that U.S. banks to search customer transactions for key terms like ‘MAGA’ and ‘Trump’ to identify ‘extremism’ in a memo distributed in the aftermath of January 6.
The federal agencies provided the financial institutions ‘thresholds’ for which an SAR should be raise, according to Peter Sullivan, the FBI’s former financial sector liaison.
He sat for a transcribed interview with the weaponization committee on April 9.
According to the ‘threshold’ set by the FBI and FinCEN, Bank of America then sent the data of the 211 individuals.
‘Given this coordination, the Committee and Select Subcommittee are concerned that the federal government, through the FBI and FinCEN, sent similar or identical thresholds to other financial institutions that manipulated the SAR filing process to elicit the information and transaction history of individuals without any allegation of federal criminal conduct,’ the letter to Yellen said.
When pressed on the Treasury’s FinCEN materials circulated to top financial institutions during a February Congressional hearing, Yellen dodges lawmakers’ questions, responding once ‘I promise a thorough look into everything.’
After Bank of America sent over the list of 211 customers’ whose transactions met the federal ‘thresholds,’ Sullivan requested additional transaction history.
He asked that Bank of America send over any ‘weapons-related transactions.’
Four Bank of America customers out of the original 211 qualified.
This prompted ‘criminal background queries’ into the four customers.
Later, four federal agents were deployed to three FBI field offices to investigate those individuals.
After the investigations were complete, the FBI uploaded their findings to a portal and sent out ‘a number of leads’ on additional persons of interest.
But, according to the then-Section Chief of the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Operations Selection Steve Jensen, the leads were pulled because they ‘lacked allegations of federal criminal conduct.’
Meaning, though these individuals met ‘thresholds’ set by the FBI and FinCEN, they were not actually being investigated for an alleged crime.
‘Given this coordination, the Committee and Select Subcommittee are concerned that the federal government, through the FBI and FinCEN, sent similar or identical thresholds to other financial institutions that manipulated the SAR filing process to elicit the information and transaction history of individuals without any allegation of federal criminal conduct,’ the letter to Yellen continued.
In the aftermath of January 6, FinCEN even suggested that banks review transactions at sporting and recreational supplies stores like Cabela’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Bass Pro Shops in order to detect customers who might be ‘extremists.’
In addition, officials also warned banks of ‘extremism’ indicators like the purchase of a religious text, like a Bible, or searches including the terms ‘MAGA’ and ‘TRUMP.’
In March, Jordan sent letters to GoFundMe and Eventbrite asking that they cooperate with committee’s ongoing investigation.
House Republicans say that the federal government urged the crowdfunding platforms to ‘comb’ through their personal transactions ‘report charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression.’
The federal government also created ‘profiles’ on the American people kept in a ‘secret portal’ shared with companies to identify customer’s levels of extremism, Jordan has said.
An interface shared between over 650 companies and federal officials holds a ‘secret portal’ containing sensitive data on American citizens, the Ohio Republican warned at a March 6 hearing.
‘The federal government is building profiles on the American people. And the profile is not based criminal conduct, it’s based on political belief,’ Jordan said at the time.
‘And if you’ve got the wrong political beliefs, well you’re potentially a domestic violent extremist.’
