Capitol Riot, As the Trump-affiliated Businesses Have Claimed

Capital One has asked a federal judge to permanently dismiss a lawsuit from the Trump Organization over the closure of hundreds of bank accounts in 2021, arguing in new court filings that the shutdowns stemmed from a monthslong anti-money-laundering review — not retaliation for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, as the Trump-affiliated businesses have claimed. In a motion to dismiss filed Friday in a Florida federal court, Capital One's lawyers wrote that the bank's own records and the plaintiffs' allegations "make clear that Capital One closed Plaintiffs' accounts for anti-money laundering ('AML') reasons.

The bank said the decision followed "months of analysis and a careful review" by its financial-crimes team, which it described as staffed by employees with "decades of law enforcement experience. However, the filings suggest the Trump Organization and its affiliated entities were given no chance to address any money-laundering or compliance concerns before the accounts were closed. It remains unclear whether subsequent banks have raised similar concerns or what steps the organization took in response to Capital One's allegations.

The Trump Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The case centers on roughly 385 accounts tied to the Trump Organization, Eric Trump, and a collection of affiliated businesses — including a winery, a bottled-water company, and a golf course developer — that had banked with Capital One for more than a decade before the accounts were shut down in mid-2021. In an amended complaint filed in July, the Trump-affiliated companies insisted the closures had nothing to do with financial crime or money laundering, but everything to do with politics. They allege Capital One moved to distance itself from Donald Trump after the Capitol riot and that the bank's anti-money-laundering rationale was invented after the fact to cover for that decision.

Capital One has flatly denied those assertions, arguing that the Trump theory rests on "cherry-picked quotations unsupported by the full context" of the bank's own records, and that nothing in the complaint shows the anti-money-laundering explanation was a cover story. The bank's lawyers also noted that it kept its reasoning confidential at the time, never publicizing the termination decision or its internal process, and gave the Trump companies months — plus several extensions — to move their money elsewhere, which they did. Large sections of the July amended complaint remain blacked out under a court-approved sealing order, including an entire portion titled "January 6, 2021: The Political Trigger.

Beyond disputing the facts, Capital One reiterated that it had the right to close any account "at any time, for any or no reason and without notice" — language the Trump companies do not dispute. The presiding judge, Roy Altman, had already dismissed an earlier version of the lawsuit in March on similar grounds, ruling that a bank's reason for closing an account under such an open-ended contract clause generally cannot be second-guessed in court. Capital One has asked Altman to dismiss the new complaint permanently this time, without another chance to refile.

The bank is also pushing back against a new claim added in July: that Capital One defrauded the plaintiffs by staying silent about its reasoning. Capital One's attorneys say the bank had no obligation to explain itself, and separately argue that federal banking-secrecy law would have barred it from disclosing internal anti-money-laundering findings even if it wanted. That secrecy law is also at the center of a related fight over public access.

In a separate motion filed Friday, Capital One asked the court to keep sealed a portion of one exhibit that it says contains information protected under the Bank Secrecy Act, along with employee names, customer account numbers, and unrelated compensation details. The Trump companies do not oppose sealing the account numbers or that one Secrecy Act-related passage, but are contesting several other redactions. A separate case against JP Morgan Chase, filed in January over accounts closed in the same period, makes similar claims.

President Trump signed an executive order last August directing regulators to crack down on what he and other conservatives call politically motivated 'debanking. Capital One has tangled with Trump before: in 2019, during his first term, the president sued the bank alongside Deutsche Bank to block them both from turning over his financial records to a Democratic-led congressional inquiry."