Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., during the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump on Thursday sued JPMorgan Chase and its CEO Jamie Dimon for $5 billion, alleging the bank closed his accounts for “political and social motivations,” according to a court filing.
The lawsuit says in early 2021 the bank notified Trump and his businesses that several of his accounts would close after decades at the bank. That came in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
In a statement to ABC News, JPMorgan said the suit has “no merit” and they will fight it in court.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates
James Comey speaks onstage at 92NY on May 30, 2023 in New York City. Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Attorneys for former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James have asked a judge to throw out their criminal indictments on the basis that the Trump-installed prosecutor who charged them was appointed unlawfully.
At a hearing Thursday, U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie pressed Justice Department lawyers on the government’s conduct in bringing indictments against Comey and James, which were brought just weeks apart at the direct urging of President Donald Trump after he removed a previous appointee overseeing the powerful U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia and replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide and former insurance lawyer with no prior prosecutorial experience.
Lawyers for Comey, who has pleaded not guilty to allegedly making false statements to Congress, and James, who has pleaded not guilty to mortgage fraud-related charges, argued that the cases against them are “fatally flawed” because Halligan’s appointment violates the Constitution’s Appointments Clause.
Judge Currie said she would plan to rule before Thanksgiving.
While Currie didn’t indicate how she will ultimately rule, her questions suggested she was skeptical of the government’s actions in their rushed appointment of Halligan, who quickly moved to bring charges against two of Trump’s perceived political foes without the support of career prosecutors in her office.
Some of the arguments centered around revelations in a legal brief earlier this month that, more than a month after Halligan was appointed to lead the office, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi signed an additional order that sought to retroactively appoint Halligan as a “Special Attorney” who she had authorized to seek the indictments of Comey and James.
In her order, Bondi said that “based on my review” of Halligan’s appearances before the grand juries that indicted both Comey and James, she sought to further ratify support of her actions.
But Judge Currie said that was not possible because Bondi “couldn’t have” reviewed all of those materials. The judge revealed during the hearing that there is a portion of the transcript of Halligan’s presentation to the grand jury — from 4:28 p.m. on the day of the indictment until the indictment was returned — that is missing.
It “appears to me,” the judge said, that there was “no court reporter present,” and if there was, “she didn’t transcribe that portion.”
“How does the AG say she has reviewed” the grand jury material “when they didn’t exist?” the judge asked?
Henry Whitaker, who argued on behalf of the government, told the judge that Bondi’s “awareness of the material facts” was all that was necessary to sign a document retroactively ratifying Halligan’s appointment.
Whitaker further argued that the issues raised by Comey and James in seeking to invalidate Halligan’s appointment were based on “at best, a paperwork error” and requested that if Currie were to disqualify Halligan, that she leave the indictments in place.
The legal challenge comes on the heels of other successful efforts to disqualify prosecutors that the Trump administration had attempted to install in at least three other U.S. attorneys offices in Los Angeles, Nevada and New Jersey beyond the 120-day limit set by federal law.
Judge Currie, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton from South Carolina, was appointed last month to oversee the challenge to Halligan’s appointment.
In legal briefs, attorneys for both Comey and James have pointed to the unusual series of developments leading up to Halligan’s eventual appointment to lead the office after the ouster of Erik Siebert, who judges in the Eastern District of Virginia had unanimously voted to lead the office on an interim basis after his 120-day appointment by Attorney General Pam Bondi had expired.
Siebert, as ABC News previously reported, had resisted bringing the cases against both Comey and James after career prosecutors in the office determined evidence against them would likely fail to convince a jury of their guilt.
But just four days after Halligan was installed to lead the office, according to sources, she dismissed recommendations of prosecutors and personally presented the charges against Comey before a grand jury, which voted to indict him on two of three counts sought by Halligan. Just two weeks later, Halligan again personally appeared before a grand jury to seek James’ indictment.
“The President and Attorney General appointed the President’s personal lawyer as interim U.S. Attorney in violation of a clear statutory command so that the interim U.S. Attorney could indict an outspoken critic of the President just days before the relevant statute of limitations was set to expire,” Comey’s attorneys said in a filing last month.
Critics say the indictments are part of a campaign of retribution by Trump against his perceived political foes, but Vice President JD Vance has said any such prosecutions are “driven by law and not by politics.”
Both James and Comey have urged Judge Currie to dismiss their indictments with prejudice, which would restrict from the government from bringing charges against them again if Halligan’s appointment were to be invalidated.
Additional details on the arrest were not immediately released.
Beam, featured in Netflix’s “Last Chance U,” is a football legend in the Bay Area and had coached the sport for over 40 years before becoming solely the school’s athletic director last year. He remains in the hospital and his condition is not clear.
Beam was at the Laney Fieldhouse when he was shot shortly before noon on Thursday, authorities said. The alleged shooter fled the scene.
Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee said in a statement on Thursday, “Coach Beam is a giant in Oakland — a mentor, an educator, and a lifeline for thousands of young people.”
“We are praying for him,” Lee said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
: Senator John Thune (R-SD) at the annual GRAMMYs on the Hill Advocacy Day on Capital Hill on April 19, 2018 in Washington, DC. Capitol Hill’s largest and most prestigious legislative event for music creators. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/WireImage for The Recording Academ
(WASHINGTON) — With critical food assistance benefits set to run out Saturday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Wednesday said he is talking with President Donald Trump about the shutdown as lawmakers appear sympathetic, but still entrenched.
The Department of Agriculture said earlier this week that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, which serve roughly 42 million low-income Americans, will not be issued on Nov. 1 amid the ongoing government shutdown.
On Tuesday night as he traveled to South Korea, Trump signaled his administration may find a solution to help fund SNAP, saying “we’re going to get it done,” without offering any details on how.
At the same time, Trump blamed Democrats for putting Americans at risk of losing critical federal food assistance this weekend.
“The Democrats have caused the problem on food stamps … because all they have to do is sign, and, you know, they sign, I’ll meet with them,” Trump said.
Asked about Trump’s SNAP benefits comments, Thune told reporters on Wednesday that he spoke to Trump on Tuesday, but didn’t have insight into what his comments meant.
“I think that what he is saying consistently is ‘Open up the government and then we’ — and that’s the way to fund SNAP,” Thune said.
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has a new bill that would fund SNAP during the shutdown. While several Republican senators support it, Thune has appeared lukewarm about bringing it to the floor.
Asked if Trump’s comments were an endorsement of bills like Hawley’s that would fund SNAP during the shutdown, Thune said he wasn’t sure if that’s what Trump was referring to.
“I think the message that he and the rest of the White House, including JD yesterday, have delivered pretty clearly is ‘Open up the government and that’s the way to fund SNAP and everything else.’ If he’s got something else he’s thinking about, I’ll certainly be open to listening to that,” Thune said.
On Wednesday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson warned that the impacts of the government shutdown this week — including a possible food crisis as well as missed paychecks for federal workers and air traffic controllers — are “getting really tough for the American people,” placing the onus squarely on Democrats.
“The Democrats are coming near now to a cliff that they will not be able to turn back from,” Johnson said at a news conference in the Capitol. “You’ve got families and children that rely upon SNAP benefits that are going to go hungry here at the end of the week.”
As Democrats continue their fight over health care subsidies as the Nov. 1 open enrollment date approaches, Trump said Tuesday night that he would work with Democrats — as long as they vote to fund the government.
“I’d say, open up the government and we’ll work it out,” Trump told reporters.
Democrats are working to balance their health care demands and find solutions for SNAP, with Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján expected to attempt to get the Senate to unanimously pass legislation that would direct the USDA to release available contingency funds to ensure benefits under SNAP and the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program continue during the shutdown.
Luján’s bill is co-sponsored by every Democrat in the Senate, but does not have any Republican co-sponsors. Because it’s being put on the floor by Democrats, the only way the bill could pass is if every senator supports it — meaning it will likely fail as a result.
“Right now, we’re staring down the barrel at two crises at once. A health care crisis and a hunger crisis,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a press conference Wednesday afternoon.
“We don’t want to pit health care and food. Thank you. We think you can have both,” he later shouted.
Schumer has continued to call on Republicans to “sit-down and negotiate with us” to reopen the government and address the health care crisis.
Thune told reporters Wednesday morning that discussions over a path out of the shutdown have “ticked up significantly” and that he’s “hopeful” that something fruitful will soon emerge.
“It’s ticked up significantly,” Thune said of talks among rank-and-file members. “And hopefully that’ll be a precursor of things to come. But yeah, there’s a lot of higher-level conversation.”
Thune stressed that conversations are going on among rank-and-file members and not among leadership.
“There are a lot of rank-and-file members that continue to, I think, want to pursue solutions and to be able to address the issues they care about, which is including health care, which as I just said right there we are willing to do, but it is obviously contingent upon them opening up the government.”
ABC News’ Megan Mistry, Isabella Murray and Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.
