Posted on October 15, 2022

Chase Bank Allegedly Shutters Bank Account of Religious Freedom Nonprofit, Demands Donor List

Jon Brown, Fox News, October 13, 2022

JPMorgan Chase Bank allegedly closed the bank account of a religious freedom nonprofit and demanded a list of its donors as a condition to have the account reinstated.

The bank account of the National Committee for Religious Freedom (NCRF), which is a nonpartisan, multi-faith nonprofit founded by former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, was recently closed without explanation, Brownback told FOX Business.

“We went into a Chase branch in the District of Columbia to open an account, no problem,” Brownback said. “Then, several weeks later, I went to put another deposit in the account, and they said, ‘Your account has been canceled, we’ll be sending your money back to you.'”

Brownback, who served Kansas as its governor and senator before becoming the international religious freedom ambassador in the Trump administration, said that when NCRF’s executive director asked about why the account had been closed, the executive director was stonewalled.

“The people said the decision was made at the corporate level, it’s secret, we’re not going to tell you why, and it’s irrevocable,” Brownback said. “We were just stunned.” He also penned an op-ed for The Washington Examiner last week detailing the situation.

In his op-ed, Brownback alleged that a Chase employee reached out to the nonprofit and said Chase would reconsider doing business with the nonprofit if it would provide a donor list, a list of political candidates it intended to support and a full explanation of the criteria by which it would endorse them.

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Brownback provided FOX Business with the Sept. 27 letter he sent to Chase CEO Jamie Dimon demanding answers for the account closure. Brownback noted he has yet to hear back from the billionaire businessman who recently testified before Congress about the importance of religious freedom.

“We are concerned that religious institutions, houses of worship, and people of all faiths are at risk of having their business, credit, or even personal or private bank accounts terminated for any or no reason at all,” Brownback wrote in part to Dimon.

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