'Alarming' surveillance: Feds asked banks to search private transactions for terms like ‘MAGA,’ ‘Trump’

January 17, 2024

In The News

Brooke Singman

Fox News

EXCLUSIVE: Federal investigators asked banks to search and filter customer transactions by using terms like "MAGA" and "Trump" as part of an investigation into Jan. 6, warning that purchases of "religious texts" could indicate "extremism," the House Judiciary Committee revealed Wednesday.

Fox News Digital has learned the committee also obtained documents that indicate officials suggested that banks query transactions with keywords like Dick's Sporting Goods, Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops and more.

The House Judiciary Committee and its subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government have been conducting oversight of federal law enforcement’s "receipt of information about American citizens without legal process and its engagement with the private sector."

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan said the documents obtained by the committee indicate that after Jan. 6, 2021, the Treasury Department’s Office of Stakeholder Integration and Engagement in the Strategic Operations of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, distributed materials to financial institutions that outlined "typologies" of "various persons of interest" and provided the banks with "suggested search terms and Merchant Category Codes for identifying transactions on behalf of federal law enforcement."

The materials included a document recommending the use of generic terms like "Trump" and "MAGA" to "search Zelle payment messages" as well as a "prior FinCEN analysis" of "Lone Actor/Homegrown Violent Extremism Indicators."

https://judiciary.house.gov/media/in-the-news/alarming-surveillance-feds-asked-banks-search-private-transactions-terms-maga