By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Banking group Citibank was subpoenaed on Thursday by Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan for a congressional probe into alleged data sharing by banks with the FBI.
Panels in the Republican-led chamber are probing major banks over sharing Americans’ private financial data with the FBI without legal process for transactions made in the Washington, D.C., area around Jan. 6, 2021, Jordan said in a statement on Thursday.
The House Judiciary panel said it wrote to Citibank in June requesting “voluntary cooperation to determine the extent to which banks illegally supplied the FBI with Americans’ financial data.” It added that Citibank has failed to comply with the panel’s request voluntarily.
Citibank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to stop congressional certification of the 2020 election results in which the then-president, a Republican, lost to current President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
Congress eventually certified the election results even as Trump continued repeating his false assertion that he won those elections.
Trump’s fellow Republicans currently hold a narrow majority in the House of Representatives while Biden’s fellow Democrats are in a narrow majority in the Senate.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Jasper Ward in Washington; Editing by Chris Reese)
