Capital One has asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit from the Trump Organization that challenged the bank’s 2021 decision to close hundreds of accounts. In a motion filed in Florida, the bank says the account shutdowns resulted from a monthslong anti-money-laundering review, not political retaliation tied to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot as the Trump businesses have alleged.
According to the bank’s filing, its financial-crimes team conducted a careful, multimonth analysis before terminating relationships with roughly 385 accounts tied to the Trump Organization, Eric Trump and a set of affiliated companies, including a winery, a bottled-water firm and a golf course developer. The entities had banked with Capital One for more than a decade before the mid-2021 closures.
The Trump-affiliated plaintiffs amended their complaint earlier in July, insisting the closures were politically motivated and asserting that the bank invented an anti-money-laundering rationale afterward. Capital One responds that the complaint relies on cherry-picked excerpts taken out of context and that nothing in the filings shows the AML explanation was a cover story.
Capital One also notes it never publicized the termination decision or the internal process that led to it, and that it provided the Trump companies months, with several extensions, to move their funds — which they did. The bank further argues its customer agreements gave it broad discretion to close accounts, including clauses allowing termination at any time for any or no reason and without notice, language the Trump entities do not dispute.
Judge Roy Altman previously dismissed an earlier version of the lawsuit in March, finding that courts generally will not second-guess a bank’s reason for closing an account when the contract grants such open-ended authority. In the new motion, Capital One asks the judge to dismiss the amended complaint with prejudice, meaning no further opportunity to refile.
The amended complaint included a new claim that Capital One committed fraud by remaining silent about its reasons for closure. Capital One counters that it had no duty to disclose its internal reasoning and adds that federal banking-secrecy law would have prevented the bank from revealing internal AML findings even if it had chosen to explain itself.
A related dispute concerns what parts of the record should remain under seal. Capital One asked the court to keep portions of an exhibit sealed, citing protection under the Bank Secrecy Act as well as the privacy of employee names, customer account numbers and unrelated compensation details. The Trump companies do not oppose sealing the account numbers and the Bank Secrecy Act passage, but they contest some of the other redactions.
This fight is one of several suits by Trump-aligned entities against major banks after President Trump returned to office. A separate lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase filed in January raises similar claims over accounts closed in the same period. Last August, the president signed an executive order directing regulators to address what he and others call politically motivated ‘debanking.’ Capital One and the Trump organization have previously clashed; in 2019 the president sued Capital One and another bank to block the release of his financial records to Congress.
It remains unclear whether banks that later handled Trump Organization accounts raised similar AML concerns, or what specific steps the organization took in response to Capital One’s review. The Trump Organization did not immediately respond to requests for comment.