Capital One closed roughly 300 Trump Organization bank accounts in 2021 after “months of analysis and a careful review” by the lender’s anti-money laundering team, the bank said Friday in court documents.
The bank on Friday asked a federal judge to dismiss a complaint related to the Trump Organization’s March 2025 lawsuit, which alleged Capital One closed the accounts for political reasons tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
The federal court has dismissed two versions of the Trump Organization’s complaint against Capital One – but each time has given the plaintiff the chance to amend the complaint.
The second amended complaint, which Capital One asked Friday to be tossed, “concedes that Plaintiffs have never sought reinstatement of their accounts, and Plaintiffs’ vague assertion that the closure decision impaired Plaintiffs’ ability to obtain services with other banks is entirely backwards,” the bank said.
The Trump Organization was able to secure banking services elsewhere “promptly,” Capital One asserted.
“Capital One never publicized the termination decision nor its confidential internal process giving rise to the closure,” the bank said Friday. “Indeed, Capital One’s decision to close Plaintiffs’ accounts only became public because of Plaintiffs’ own decision to pursue this litigation.”
Capital One has never accused the Trump Organization of illegal money laundering. But, the bank noted in Friday’s motion, “the transaction patterns identified by Capital One are among the types of activity flagged by federal banking guidance.”
In its filing Friday, the bank alleged the Trump Organization has said the anti-money laundering flag is a cover Capital One is using to justify the account closure.
“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 seen by Bloomberg. “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 bank, in its filing Friday, said the Trump Organization “cannot meaningfully criticize the robust process undertaken by Capital One’s AML professionals with decades of law enforcement experience in deciding to close the accounts.”
“Instead, Plaintiffs attempt to keep their misguided allegations of political discrimination alive by speculating that Capital One’s anti-money laundering concerns were pretextual and claiming that Plaintiffs were somehow ‘misled’ by the contractually permitted closure decision,” the bank said. “But these new theories are based on cherry-picked quotations unsupported by the full context of the documents Plaintiffs cite.”
The Trump Organization could soon file a revised version of the complaint – with fewer redactions – if both sides agree on which details can go public. Capital One asked that employees involved in the account closure decision continue to remain anonymous.
According to Capital One, Trump Organization lawyers have said they could have explained the flagged transactions if they’d been asked to.
It’s unclear, though, how the explanation “would have altered Capital One’s determination or prevented the account closures,” the bank said.
“Plaintiffs cannot reasonably claim that Capital One … ‘defrauded’ them as to the confidential reasoning for account closure,” the bank asserted Friday. “Under the terms of the parties’ agreement, Plaintiffs were not entitled to any reason for the closure decision and received none.”
Capital One is not the only bank President Donald Trump or his businesses have taken to court over alleged political debanking.
The president sued JPMorgan Chase in January, alleging trade libel and breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. Trump also accused the bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, of violating Florida’s unfair and deceptive trade practices act. JPMorgan denied the claims, and the bank’s lawyers have called Trump’s lawsuit “threadbare.”
