James Comer Gives FDIC Hard Deadline to Hand Over Documents Related to 'Politicized' Crypto Regulation

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer has given the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) a hard deadline to answer questions on what he has described as the "debanking" of conservative individuals due to their political views or involvement in the crypto industry.

As the committee continues to focus on the matter, the new letter claims it is seeking to "ascertain whether debanking stems from financial institutions or government actors." The question follows inquiries to CEOs and leaders of the crypto industry on the matter.

Now, as the committee sets its sights on the FDIC, it told the entity that on February 5 it "released a document containing voluminous redacted correspondence between the agency and financial institutions that sought to engage, or did engage, in "crypto-related activities." Many of them received "pause letters."

For that reason it asked for the unredacted versions of the correspondence to "better understand the relationship between relevant financial institutions and government regulators and their respective approaches to crypto-related activities."

The letter goes on to quote the FDIC, which said the documents show "that requests from these banks were almost universally met with resistance, ranging from repeated requests for further information, to multi-month periods of silence as institutions waited for responses, to directives from supervisors to pause, suspend, or refrain from expanding all crypto- or blockchain-related activity." It recalls a time when the FDIC was set to visit a bank engaging in such activities but the bank later said it had ceased "pursuing crypto-related activities at this time."

"The Committee is concerned that overreach by government regulators may
have arbitrarily suppressed industries they deemed unfavorable, impacting business operations by preventing entities from accessing cash to fulfill payroll or driving technological and financial innovation overseas," the committee adds, moving on to give the entity until March 13 to provide a series of documents.

In late January, President Donald Trump accused the CEOs of Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase of "debanking" conservatives. "I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that included a place called Bank of America," Trump said while addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, virtually.

Comer said another catalyst was a statement from investor Marc Andressen, who in an interview said that approximately 30 tech founders were debanked due to their political positions, which he argued were against the Biden administration. He added that in her memoir First Lady Melania Trump said she experienced a similar situation due to her political views.