(Yahoo! Finance) - The second year of President Trump's second term just got more complicated for the nation's largest bank and its longtime CEO Jamie Dimon.
On Thursday, Trump's legal team filed a $5 billion lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Dimon, accusing the nation’s largest bank of debanking him, or terminating bank services, for political reasons.
The lawsuit, filed in a a Florida court in Miami, accuses the bank of breaching its "implied convenant of good faith and fair dealing," citing the bank's code of conduct and "Dimon's lofty assertions" and quoting from the CEO's 2021 shareholder letter.
"Despite claiming to hold these principles dear, JPMC violated them by unilaterally — and without warning or remedy — terminating several of Plaintiffs’ bank accounts," Trump's attorney wrote in the complaint.
The move comes after Trump wrote in a social media post last weekend that he planned to sue the bank for "inappropriately debanking" him.
A lawyer representing Trump in the suit stated in the filing that in February 2021, JPMorgan allegedly “without warning or provocation,” notified Trump, the Trump Organization and his family that several accounts they controlled would be closed in two months.
The lawyer further alleged that JPMorgan's "unsubstantiated, 'woke' beliefs" prompted the decision for the bank to "distance itself from President Trump and his conservative political views."
The suit further alleged that JPMorgan's actions "in violation of its code of conduct and Dimon’s lofty assertions, [are] a key indicator of a systemic, subversive industry practice that aims to coerce the public to shift and re-align their political views."
A JPMorgan spokesperson said it plans to contest the lawsuit in court, according to emailed statements.
“While we regret President Trump has sued us, we believe the suit has no merit. We respect the President’s right to sue us and our right to defend ourselves — that’s what courts are for," a JPMorgan spokesperson said in emailed comments.
The bank said it "does not close accounts for political or religious reasons," adding that it does "close accounts because they create legal or regulatory risk for the company."
For years, conservatives and certain industries, including crypto firms, have said that US banks have denied accounts to certain customers for political reasons. In August, Trump signed an executive order calling for federal bank regulators to investigate if the decisions made by agencies or financial institutions to deny access to certain customers were examples of “politicized or unlawful debanking.”
Another criticism that both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have said is that banks can use debanking too aggressively as a reputational risk-management tool when following their broad mandate under the Bank Secrecy Act of preventing fraud, money laundering, terrorism, and other crimes. And that, critics have said, has led to incorrectly evicting or refusing customers service.
Regulators “put a lot of pressure on us” and “tell us what is high risk," Dimon said during a Chase podcast from last year.
In a November regulatory filing, JPMorgan disclosed that it was facing reviews, investigations and legal proceedings tied to the Trump administration’s executive order on debanking.
Thursday's suit adds to what's become an increasingly complicated 2026 for JPMorgan and its relationship with the Trump administration. The president recently called for a one-year cap on credit card interest rates at 10% in a social media post, which Dimon said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos "would be an economic disaster."
The administration's credit card cap proposal comes amid a broader effort to focus on affordability. Dimon met with Trump twice over the summer and again in the fall as part of White House dinner where the president sought input for his administration's more recent push on affordability, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Dimon’s roller-coaster relationship with President Trump stretches back many years. In 2023, for instance, Trump described Dimon as a “highly overrated Globalist," though their relationship had shown signs of improvement in recent years.
At Davos in 2024, Dimon said Trump was "kind of right" on some issues. Last year, the executive downplayed some of the inflationary concerns economists and business leaders were raising over the agenda of newly elected President Trump. This week, however, Dimon, in an apparent response to Trump's earlier barbs, declared at Davos: "I'm a globalist."
By David Hollerith - Senior Reporter
