Capital One cites money-laundering concerns in closing Trump Organization accounts
Capital One said it closed more than 300 Trump Organization accounts in 2021 over anti-money-laundering concerns, defending the move against a lawsuit. The bank's court filing marks the first time a bank has formally linked such concerns to President Donald Trump's family business.
US bank Capital One Financial said on Friday that it closed more than 300 accounts linked to the Trump Organization in 2021, citing anti-money-laundering concerns. The disclosure came in a court filing seeking to dismiss a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump's family business over the account closures.
The Trump Organization and Eric Trump, the president's son, sued Capital One in March 2025 in a Florida federal court, arguing the bank shut the accounts because of its "woke" beliefs and a desire to benefit from the political climate after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. Capital One has never accused the Trump Organization of illegal money laundering, but Friday's filing said the closures were based on AML reasons and followed a months-long review by the bank's anti-money-laundering team in line with bank policies and regulatory guidance.
The filing said the plaintiffs' own allegations and documents show the accounts were closed for AML reasons. Capital One also rejected claims of political pretext, describing them as "misguided" and based on "cherry-picked quotations" without full context. The bank said the transaction patterns it identified were among those flagged by federal banking guidance.
Capital One informed the Trump Organization in March 2021 that it planned to close more than 300 accounts. The federal court in Miami has dismissed two earlier versions of the complaint, each time allowing the plaintiffs to amend. Capital One said the latest complaint, filed in July, "suffers from the same fundamental flaws" as the previous ones.
Since President Trump began his second term, his administration has pressured large banks, echoing conservative complaints that financial institutions deliberately target the political right. In August 2025, Trump signed an executive order barring discriminatory debanking, and in January he sued JPMorgan Chase on similar grounds.
During his first term, in 2019, Trump sued Capital One and Deutsche Bank to prevent them from sharing his financial records with Congress as part of a Democratic-led investigation. At the time, Deutsche Bank denied a report that its anti-money-laundering staff had flagged transactions but executives ignored the warnings.
