Freedom Line Blog

By now Americans are well familiar with the Obama Administration’s habit of circumventing laws and persecuting groups it disfavors.  The IRS.  Operation “Fast and Furious.”  Targeting journalists.  The EPA.  More recently, its release of five high-level terrorists from Guantanamo Bay without consulting Congress as required by statute.

Now, we can add “Operation Choke Point” to that dishonorable list.

As detailed by a new House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report, Operation Choke Point is an Obama Justice Department campaign to “choke out” perfectly legal businesses that the Administration simply finds politically objectionable.  “The goal of the initiative,” the House report notes, “is to deny these merchants access to the banking and payments networks that every business needs to survive”:

Over the past year, the Department of Justice has initiated a wide-ranging investigation of banks and payment processors, known informally as ‘Operation Choke Point.’  As of December 2013, the Department has issued over fifty subpoenas to banks and payment processors.  The ostensible goal of the investigation is to combat mass-market consumer fraud by foreclosing fraudsters’ access to payment systems.  However, there is evidence that the true goal of Operation Choke Point is to target industries deemed ‘high-risk’ or otherwise objectionable by the Administration.”

Those targeted industries include firearms and ammunition sellers, short-term lenders that help lower-income workers, and other legitimate businesses.  By threatening and pressuring banks and financial institutions through this operation, the Obama Administration hopes to pressure them to refuse to continue doing business with law-abiding targeted industries.  Although the Administration claims to be acting on the basis of federal statutes prohibiting consumer fraud, the House report notes that no fraud by the targeted businesses has been demonstrated, let alone proven by evidence in a court of law.

The House will continue to pursue the matter, but individual Americans can do their part by remaining vigilant on this issue, and by contacting their elected representatives in the House and Senate to demand action (contact information can be found quickly and easily on CFIF’s “Take Action” page here).