State Auditor and GOP candidate for Alabama Secretary of State Andrew Sorrell recently detailed to Fox News Digital his experience with being "debanked" during the Biden administration.
Debanking refers to financial institutions closing bank accounts and canceling card processing services due to the assumption that a particular client is too high-risk. Frequently, people are debanked without warning or explanation.
The practice has been a focus for Republicans since the Obama administration, when the DOJ initiative called "Operation Chokepoint," which saw federal regulators encouraging financial institutions not to work with businesses it determined as high risk, such as gun and ammunition sellers.
Operation Chokepoint was officially ended in 2017 after a litany of lawsuits. However, the practice has been observed since then, especially amongst right-leaning figures, who have accused Democratic administrations' regulators of bullying banks to target conservatives.
Sorrell spoke to Fox News Digital in his capacity as the Auditor at Large for the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF), a nationwide group of state financial officers dedicated to pushing free-market values across the United States.
In the segment, appearing remotely from the SFOF conference in Orlando, Florida, Sorrell detailed his claims of being debanked, which lasted from 2021 to 2023, when his business, a federally licensed firearms store, had its credit card and insurance accounts shut down without explanation.
"When I was initially debanked, I didn't realize I was getting debanked," Sorrell said. "What happened was I just get a letter one day from our credit card company, and this was for my gun store, Gold Guns and Guitars."
"[W]e get this curious letter in the mail, and it says that in 30 days, we're closing your account. And it didn't tell us why at all. So, my first thought was, obviously, my business partner forgot to pay our credit card bill. That's the only reason the credit card company would possibly be dropping us, right?
After eliminating the possibility of a failed payment, Sorrell transferred his business to another credit card. One year later, he received a similar letter from his credit card processor. The following year, the company's insurance company also dropped them.
"So we're doing about 2 million dollars in revenue, about a million and a half of that is done by credit card or debit card transactions, and I was really confused this time, because why would a credit card processor drop us?" Sorrell continued.
Sorrell said he was initially shocked that this was happening in Alabama, citing at least one example.
"I'm convinced this is happening to other people in Alabama," Sorrell said. "I know of one. His name is Will. He's a Bitcoin miner in the Shoals area, and he said he was debanked because he mines Bitcoin. This is un-American, and it has to be stopped."
Sorrell noted that the debanking issues are almost exclusively coming from large national banks, who he claimed have faced political pressure from the previous administrations. He also supported state efforts to combat the practice.
The Alabama legislature did consider legislation to crack down on debanking at the state level. However, after receiving a public hearing, the legislation failed to even receive a vote.
See: Public hearing held on Alabama debanking legislation
"I actually have some sympathy for these large banks, and I think passing debanking legislation at the state level might actually help some of these large banks," Sorrell continued. "Because they can go back, and they can say, 'I'm sorry, Alabama has now passed debanking legislation. We're just following the law, we don't want to debank people anymore.'"
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