House GOP Wants Feds to Get Search Warrants Before Asking Banks for Customers’ Private Data

A subcommittee hears that the government, banks, and big tech firms routinely ignore the Fourth Amendment’s guarantees against unreasonable searches.

Ranking member Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI), right, debates with Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), left, during a hearing before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government of the House Judiciary Committee at Rayburn House Office Building, Capitol Hill in Washington on May 18, 2023. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Federal officials distributed to several of the nation’s biggest banks a politically motivated report from a left-wing activist group to discredit a conservative Christian public interest law firm that has won 15 Supreme Court cases in recent years.

Officials in the Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) “also passed along a report to several large banks titled ’Bankrolling Bigotry: An Overview of the Online Funding Strategies of American Hate Groups.’ Included among those supposed hate groups is the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) ... I found this characterization curious because the ADF that I know is anything but a hate group,” Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) told a March 7 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.