Los-Angeles-Shooter Loc: Los Angeles

Eric Holder's Bank Intimidation Continues to Choke Out Firearms and Ammunition Dealers
Katie Pavlich | May 19, 2014


Last year the Department of Justice partnered with the FDIC and the Federal Trade Commission to put a whole host of industries (and their customers) on a "high-risk" list and urged banks to pay close attention to those industries as part of Operation Choke Point. Operation Choke Point is described this way by USConsumers.org:

Operation Choke Point is a program by the Obama Administration designed to interfere with and destroy the banking relationships between America's banks and their clients. The name, "Operation Choke Point" was developed by the Department of Justice in Collaboration with the FDIC and the Office of Comptroller of Currency at the Treasury Department.
How it works:
-Civil Investigative Demands (CIDs): These are a type of demand for information from banks an businesses issued by federal regulators as a "fishing expedition." Typically these CIDs request information about business practices, consumer behavior, consumer transaction data, and proprietary business information. Once one of these CIDs is received, companies are restricted from revealing the nature of the inquiry.
-Enforcement Teams: DOJ and FDIC send enforcement teams to banks to intimidate them into ending their relationships with the industries listed above. The clients of these banks report that, without warning, they are notified by their banks that their banking relationship has ended, and they will need to find a new place to bank.

Storefront gun dealers, online dealers and ammunition dealers are on the "high risk" list, along with porn and other salacious products (as if they're even comparable, the Second Amendment is constitutional right, yet it's on the DOJ hit list). DOJ argues the program is needed to stop fraud, but that's a lie. The program is used to target politically inconvenient industries without the permission of Congress. As David Codrea has reported, these tactics are not new. Gun grabbing politicians like Senators Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer have regularly compared firearms they don't like to child porn.

Linking firearms with pornography is hardly a new tack. In 2009, this column noted a multitude of idiotic offensive proposals by “The Smutty Professor,” Darrell A.H. Miller, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati. His "Guns as Smut: Defending the Home-Bound Second Amendment," published in the Columbia Law Review, “offers a provocative proposal for tackling the issue of Second Amendment scope, one tucked in many dresser drawers across the nation: Treat the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for self-defense the same as the right to own and view adult obscenity under the First Amendment -- a robust right in the home, subject to near-plenary restriction by elected government everywhere else.”

Likening guns with obscene materials isn’t limited to loopy, agenda-driven ivory tower academics with no real-world influence. Anti-gun Senators Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer, with assists from Dick Durbin and Patrick Leahy, extended the comparison and went beyond it, advocating certain semiautomatics were equivalent with “child pornography,” and thus unprotected by the Bill of Rights.
Now according to the Washington Times, online gun dealers are feeling the squeeze thanks to Operation Choke Point, just like the Justice Department planned. New regulations are destroying the relationships between banks and firearms dealers in an attempt to put them out of business.

Justice’s operation threatens to “close access to the financial system to law-abiding businesses, because the mere prospect of an enforcement action is sufficient to cause financial institutions to restrict access to their payment systems to only established companies that present low risks,” the organization said.


An ironic piece to this story is that J.P. Morgan Chase, a bank that is notorious for cutting off funds and accounts to firearms dealers, does business with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The bank holds the Bureau's credit cards. Does sending 2500 AK-47 "assault" rifles to violent Mexican drug cartels count as "high risk?" Not under Attorney General Eric Holder's standards.

These tactics are discriminatory against Americans attempting to practice their constitutional Second Amendment rights. Somehow I think Attorney General Eric Holder would be looking at this differently if it were an attack on voting rights. But then again, this is what we're dealing with:

TrainNut Loc: Ridin' the rails

It is sad that they do not want to uphold the law but work to destroy it. :cry:

DBCooper

"The current . . . Attorney General, who has been found to be in contempt of Congress after failing to provide subpoenaed documents in the Fast and Furious scandal, which his department was involved in trafficking thousands of guns across the US/Mexico border that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Mexicans and at least two federal agents, has now been caught in yet another scandal. For the past several months, the DOJ has been putting pressure on banks, in a program referred to as Operation ChokePoint, to not provide services that the Justice Department is targeting politically. Among those businesses are gun stores."

This little gem has roots going back to an Executive Order signed by Mr. Obama in 2009. Operation Choke Point was put into play by Holder in 2013 without any authority or legal authorization (sound familiar?). So far, all that our Mighty Mouse congressmen have managed to do is send a letter to Holder. Oh...and Darrell Issa and Jim Jordan stamped their feet yet again and demanded answers from Holder. I'm sure Eric is cowering in abject fear. His only concern is hoping Mrs. Clinton wins, Mr. Obama shreds the Constitution completely and stays on as president or he can get a job at McDonalds at $15/hour. Lord knows no one has done A DAMN THING to indict, fire or otherwise prosecute these criminals. Baaaaaahhhhhhhhh Wake up Sheeple! Vote the incumbents out! Up the Revolution.

Los-Angeles-Shooter Loc: Los Angeles

I have seen interviews with Holder. He is an unspeakably arrogant piece of s..t. It is obvious that he considers himself above the law. And as a practical matter, as long as we have a crooked President, a crooked bunch of Demos in the legislature, and a gutless bunch of Republicans, he won't be punished.

Incidentally, Holder is using the same illegal tactic to hurt the adult industry and adult performers. Kind of ironic, because the adult industry almost universally sucked up to Obama and supported him when he ran for office. Ironic that he is now using dirty and illegal tricks to destroy that industry and the individuals in it.

DBCooper

You're giving arrogance a bad name. Unfortunately, Holder has proven himself to be above the law. I absolutely hold Congress culpable in perpetuating the criminality that is this administration. I blame the voting public. Apathetic, mindless clones that will spout all sorts of rhetoric here and in forums like this but can't recall the last time they voted. Original thought on this forum is like Original Sin...it only happens once. Where is the die-hard left wing defense of this position? Is it only subjects that inspire name-calling, insults and right wing fanaticism that incur their involvement? When it seems obvious that one of their own has overstepped, they are incredibly loud by virtue of their silence. Holder will have a special place in Hades where all the radiators knock and his only companions will be other lawyers. Now that's Hell.

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

And the Dems can't see the nature of Progressive fascism, they choose to remain blind. Between Holder, the Regulators, and the IRS the government has found all the tools they need to effect their political will on American business... Hell the administration has little use or need for our congress as the president releases his hell hounds on anyone he chooses... Kinda like when his administration was bragging about who would live and die overseas as he chose targets for his drones, he and his administration do the same here at home by corrupting the agencies of government which are supposed to be a-political because of their not only have the power to disrupt and even destroy public and private lives, but they are supposed to serve us all equally and to do so with the best of intentions as the are after all public servants, not the public's masters... or at least so we were told.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

From the Washington Post:

Many, many millions of transactions course through payment systems at any given time. Most are on the up and up, of course. But according to the government, a growing number are the product of identity theft, money laundering or fraudulent schemes.
The Justice Department has been waging a campaign to cut off scammers' access to the financial system for the past year. Through "Operation Choke Point," prosecutors are investigating whether third-party processors that route payments for merchants through banks are ignoring signs of fraud to rake in fees from transactions.

Authorities have publicly said they are focusing on "high risk" activities -- potentially predatory activities like payday lending, as-seen-on-TV retailers and Internet gambling. Those categories, according regulators, have high rates of returns for unauthorized debit transactions, an indication of fraud.

So far, Justice has launched several criminal and civil investigations as well as issued 50 subpoenas to banks and payment processors.

SO, what is your problem? This program criminal elements attempting to use online gambling, payday loans and bogus retailers to launder money that came from criminal enterprises.

And DB Cooper, I absolutely remember the last time I voted.

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

Yes, the government always has an excuse for their unlawful activities, yet there is no misunderstanding in the banking industry when the government drops subtle hints of enhanced regulatory review and enforcement...

But just you keep pushing the company line...

BTW did Holder not just extort close to $20 billion out of JP Morgan? You just don't seem to be able to connect the dots.

DBCooper

You seem to have lost complete sight of the original posting. Your point is well taken IF the government used existing laws to contain, control and end predatory practices such as you outline. The original posting had to do with gun and ammunition sales...a business that is at least partially already controlled unlike "...as seen on TV". Operation Choke Point was used to intimidate and harass the adult entertainment industry but that point seems secondary to the original post. I don't see why it is necessary for you to change the subject. Holder is, at least on the surface and probably several layers deep, a very bad man. Mr. Obama is the same if only by association. Why would you attempt to deflect?

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

He is putting forward the government's official position as to why this is happening... He has faith in our government where you have vision and can plainly see things for what they are.

sb Loc: Florida's East Coast

This same technique is being used to make it very difficult for businesses associated with legal medical marijuana in states where it has become legalized.

Gnslngr

Extort? JP Morgan? Blur, you really took the Kool-aid this time. JPMorgan paid $1 billion for the "London Whale" scandal (the bank lost $6 billion for it's customers on a market-rattling blunder - a real stupid and never should have happened blunder - by a trader named Bruno Iksil. The bank also paid $13 billion to settle charges that it'd peddled risky mortgage-backed securities, losing decent Americans billions and billions of dollars who trusted them to give them decent advice. And it was fined another $2 billion to settle charges for failing to spot Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme (little known fact -Madoff perpetrated his Ponzi scheme, which lost decent Americans their life savings and billions of dollars, largely using JPMorgan accounts.)

Please explain this to me - why aren't you mad at Holder for not shutting that den of thieves down? How is the meager (to them) 20 billion he fined them extortion?

hamtrack Loc: Omaha NE

This is not "the fox got in the chicken house". You can trap the fox and get rid of the problems. It's a pack of wolves that just finished the last kill and is looking for anybody that even looks like opposition and that's you, brothers and sisters. The simple truth is, if they can take one of your rights away, they can take them all. They are not only above the law, they are the law and they have systematically advised the Congress to forget about it.

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

Exactly, it would seem to me that the "den of thieves" was able to use shareholder funds to purchase their freedom. Like I said, extort, rather than go for the criminal prosecution Holder went for the money, and he has sent a clear message to get in line because this is how the man rolls.

Those shareholders knew nothing of the criminal practices that JP Morgan was up to so why are they being forced to pay the bounty to keep those execs out of jail? Why did Holder prosecute no-one in a crime so great that it shook our economy to its foundation?

Gnslngr

Okay. The use of the word "extort" threw me. You are absolutely correct here - there has been not a single prosecution in the wake of the great financial crimes that destroyed our economy. There was not even a lame attempt to restore the American people to where they were before their money was stolen.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, that failure (and it may be the most significant failure of any administration) will echo for a generation or more, and it can be laid squarely at the feet of this president and this senate.

If the Republicans could ever get their act together, they could cream the Dems.