While he dismissed President Donald Trump’s $5 billion debanking lawsuit against his company, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said he also understands why the president is angry.
Trump named both Dimon and JPMorgan as defendants in a January lawsuit that accused the bank of cutting business ties with the president for political reasons after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in 2021. Trump, in the suit, claimed “political discrimination,” and is seeking $5 billion in damages from the bank for allegedly debanking him.
When asked about Trump’s lawsuit on Monday, Dimon said “the case has no merit,” yet, he said he understood Trump’s anger.
“But I agree with them,” Dimon told CNBC. “They have the right to be angry. I’d be angry, too. Like, why is a bank allowed to do that?”
JPMorgan acknowledged for the first time last month it had shut more than 50 accounts linked to Trump in 2021, after the end of his first term. Prior to the move, Trump had been a JPMorgan customer for decades, according to the lawsuit. Some of the accounts closed by the bank included those tied to hotels, housing developments, or retail shops, as well as Trump’s personal private-banking relationship that managed the inheritance he received from his father, Fred Trump, the New York Times reported.
Contrary to Trump’s claims, JPMorgan has maintained it “does not close accounts for political or religious reasons.”
JPMorgan and the White House did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Trump has filed multiple lawsuits since his return to office in January 2025. He filed a similar lawsuit against Capital One in March 2025, accusing the bank of “unjustifiably terminating” more than 300 of his accounts with the bank. He has also sued the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department to the tune of $10 billion for allegedly failing to prevent the leaking of his tax returns during his first term. While he hasn’t filed a lawsuit, Trump has also complained Bank of America refused to accept billions of dollars of deposits after the Jan. 6 riots.
Banks like JPMorgan operate under a regulatory framework that gives examiners the authority to penalize lenders for “reputational risk,” which theorized that associating with controversial clients could threaten a bank’s financial stability. In essence, regulators can ding banks during routine examinations for maintaining relationships with clients deemed politically or socially toxic.
Dimon explained Monday that because of this, the bank closes accounts when they create legal or regulatory risk. He said he doesn’t like debanking, though.
“You don’t make a lot of money in bank accounts, so it’s much easier for banks to say, ‘I’m not taking the risk, let them go bank elsewhere,’” he said.
Still, the Trump administration has pushed to remove reputational risk as a consideration from federal bank examinations, while regulators seek to codify the shift. The administration has backed a proposed rule from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) that would prohibit regulators from pressuring banks to close accounts based on a customer’s political or religious views. The Federal Reserve also said last year it was dropping reputational risk as a consideration during its supervision of banks, and in February moved to codify this change.
While Dimon dismissed Trump’s lawsuit, both he and Trump are interested in changing the system.
“There are a lot of misunderstandings here,” Dimon said. “Hopefully the law will change, and hopefully it’ll get sorted out.”
