Capital One Says It Closed Trump Organization Accounts Over Anti-Money Laundering Concerns in Court Filing

Capital One Financial pushed back Friday against a lawsuit challenging its decision to close the Trump Organization’s bank accounts years ago, stating in a new court filing that the closures followed a formal review by the bank’s anti-money laundering experts.

The disclosure marks the first time a bank has formally tied money laundering concerns to a business closure involving President Donald Trump’s family company. Capital One is seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed by casting doubt on claims that it illegally debanked the Trump Organization, a term referring to the denial of banking services on religious or political grounds.

Capital One has not accused the Trump Organization of engaging in illegal money laundering. Instead, Friday’s filing argues that the underlying documents and the plaintiffs’ own allegations demonstrate the accounts were closed for legitimate anti-money laundering reasons. “Documents and Plaintiffs’ own allegations make clear that Capital One closed Plaintiffs’ accounts for anti-money laundering (‘AML’) reasons,” the filing said. “The closures were the result of months of analysis and a careful review by Capital One’s AML team in accordance with bank policies and regulatory guidance.”

Capital One first notified the Trump Organization of its plan to close more than 300 Trump-affiliated bank accounts in March 2021. The Trump Organization and Eric Trump, the president’s son, filed a lawsuit in a Florida federal court in March 2025, alleging that Capital One closed the accounts because of what they characterized as the bank’s “woke” beliefs and a desire to capitalize on the political climate following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The federal court in Miami has twice dismissed complaints filed in the case, though the presiding court gave the plaintiffs an opportunity to submit an amended complaint after each dismissal. Capital One argued in its Friday filing that the most recent version, submitted in July, “suffers from the same fundamental flaws as their prior two pleadings.” The bank characterized the Trump Organization’s allegations of political motivation as “misguided” and said they were “based on cherry-picked quotations unsupported by the full context” of the documents submitted to the court. Capital One added that “the transaction patterns identified by Capital One are among the types of activity flagged by federal banking guidance,” pointing to established regulatory standards as the basis for its account-closure decisions.

Neither the Trump Organization nor Capital One immediately responded to requests for comment on the filing.

The case unfolds against a broader backdrop of tension between the Trump administration and major U.S. financial institutions since the start of the president’s second term. The administration has put pressure on several large banks, echoing longstanding conservative complaints that financial institutions have deliberately targeted customers and businesses associated with the political right. Trump signed an executive order in August 2025 barring what the administration described as discriminatory debanking practices. In January, Trump filed a separate lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase on similar grounds, further illustrating the fraught relationship between the administration and Wall Street during his current term.

Trump’s history of legal disputes with Capital One predates the current lawsuit. During his first term, in 2019, Trump sued both Capital One and Deutsche Bank in an effort to prevent the institutions from sharing his financial records with Congress as part of a probe led by Democratic lawmakers. Anti-money laundering professionals at Deutsche Bank reportedly flagged a set of transactions connected to Trump at the time, though bank executives ultimately did not act on those flags; Deutsche Bank denied that characterization of events when the report first surfaced.

The current dispute represents a significant escalation in the broader debanking controversy, given that Capital One’s court filing marks the first instance of a major bank formally and publicly linking anti-money laundering concerns specifically to its decision to sever ties with the Trump Organization. Previous public disputes over debanking allegations involving Trump-affiliated entities and other conservative-aligned individuals and businesses have generally centered on claims of political or ideological discrimination, rather than explicit acknowledgment by a bank that its own internal compliance review identified transaction patterns warranting scrutiny under federal anti-money laundering guidance.

With the Miami federal court having already dismissed two prior versions of the complaint and Capital One now arguing that the latest amended filing suffers from the same underlying deficiencies, the case’s future will likely hinge on how the court evaluates Capital One’s characterization of the closures as a routine, compliance-driven business decision against the Trump Organization’s continued allegations that the closures were instead politically motivated. No trial date or further hearing schedule was disclosed in the reporting on Friday’s filing.