Senator Cynthia Lummis is escalating her war against what she sees as the banking industry’s worst habit: picking and choosing customers based on politics. The Wyoming Republican is calling for a criminal investigation into major US banks that she says systematically debanked President Donald Trump, his family members, and digital asset companies for purely political reasons.
The debanking dossier
On January 31, 2026, she laid out the scope of what she considers a coordinated campaign against the Trump orbit.
“Donald Trump, the president, was debanked… Eric Trump was debanked… Donald Trump Jr. was debanked… Melania was debanked… Digital asset firms all over the country were debanked.”
The senator frames these individual incidents as part of a broader pattern she and other Republicans have labeled “Operation Choke Point 2.0.” The original Operation Choke Point was an Obama-era initiative that pressured banks to cut ties with legal but politically disfavored industries like payday lenders and firearms dealers. The sequel, critics argue, targeted crypto companies and political opponents of the Biden administration with the same playbook.
