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In a free country, no government agency should have the power to unilaterally suspend the religious and civil liberties of its citizens because of ideology or without probable cause.
Documents released by a House subcommittee show that federal officials instructed financial institutions to flag patrons’ purchases of religious texts as well as any purchases at gun or sporting good stores as indicative of potential terrorist activity.
The House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released information last week showing that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, urged banks to monitor and flag various purchases in the wake of the January 6 protest and riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chairman of the Subcommittee, sent a letter to Noah Bishoff, former director of the Office of Stakeholder Integration and Engagement in the Strategic Operations Division, requesting that he appear for an interview before the Subcommittee. In the letter, Jordan detailed some of the Subcommittee’s findings.
The letter alleges that FinCEN distributed documents to financial institutions that outlined “typologies” of people of interest. The documents provide banks with search terms and Merchant Category Codes (MCC) to use to locate purchases that should be flagged because they indicate a person who could be a potential terrorist.
FinCEN told financial institutions that indicators included “the purchase of books (including religious texts) and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views” and “transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars or plane tickets, for travel to areas with no apparent purpose.”
The bureau also distributed a slide educating financial institutions on types of purchases that could signal that a person is an “active shooter.” The extensive but “not exhaustive” list includes purchases of small arms or accessories, ammunition, “Durable Goods,” purchases at pawn shops, purchases at sporting goods stores, “Miscellaneous and Specialty Retail Shops,” and “Recreation Facilities,” such as shooting ranges.
The slide also told financial institutions to flag purchases at certain stores. Some of these include large sporting goods stores such as Academy Sports and Outdoors, Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops, and Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Jordan wrote, “Despite these transactions having no apparent criminal nexus—and, in fact, relate to Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights—FinCEN seems to have adopted a characterization of these Americans as potential threat actors. This kind of pervasive financial surveillance, carried out in coordination with and at the request of federal law enforcement, into Americans’ private transactions is alarming and raises serious doubts about FinCEN’s respect for fundamental civil liberties.”
Two days after Jordan sent his letter to Bishoff, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who is the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, sent a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and FinCEN Director Andrea Gacki. Scott stated, “Federal government efforts to target individuals and entities based on their political views is a blatant and egregious violation of our Constitution. Additionally, reported actions like these disrupt confidence in federal law enforcement and raise significant questions regarding the independence of federal financial regulators.”
Due to these concerns, Scott requested answers to a number of questions, including several regarding under whose authorization these requests were made. Notably, Scott also asked these questions: “Which religious texts were flagged as potentially indicative of extremism? And on what basis did Treasury/FinCEN conclude that purchasing or possessing of religious texts may be indicative of extremism?”
Scott also asked whether shoppers at the previously mentioned sporting goods retailers were listed as posing a heightened risk.
A source told Fox News that the documents did not include “specific time frames or limitations for banks searching customer transactions with the terms.”
To say that such actions are unconstitutional or illegal would be a gross understatement. In fact, there are so many violations, they can’t all be listed here, but let’s at least hit the major ones.
For starters, targeting Americans as potential terrorists just because they purchased a book, especially a religious text, is a serious violation of both the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses of the First Amendment. In that vein, FinCen leaders must answer the question of what these so-called “extremist” views were and how they decided that the mere act of purchasing religious texts, including a Bible, is evidence of “extremist” views.
This was not done in a vacuum. It’s been happening repeatedly. Over the past three years, the FBI has labeled traditional Catholics as extremists and sought to infiltrate and monitor Catholic churches by, among other tactics, recruiting priests to inform on parishioners. What’s more, the Department of Justice targeted parents under the manufactured guise that speaking out about their children’s education and well-being at school board meetings was akin to being domestic terrorists. And a case set to be heard by the Supreme Court will determine whether various federal agencies and officials violated the Constitution when they directed social media and Big Tech companies to censor users for posting unapproved views, opinions, and facts.
The government cannot under any circumstance prescribe what is orthodox in politics or religion nor may it favor or disfavor a particular political or religious belief. By labeling certain Americans as terrorists based on what religious text or what book they purchased is not just heinous but it sets an exceedingly perilous precedent for freedom, especially religious liberty. In the future, will Americans be forced to buy their Bibles on the black market to avoid being put on a terror watchlist?
Next, the government is also violating the Second Amendment by ascribing that the purchase of firearms or firearms accessories is somehow an indicator of potential terrorism. Otherwise law-abiding Americans have an inalienable right to buy firearms and ammunition or accessories in order to hunt or protect themselves and their family, and there is no justifiable reason to label every single person who purchases such goods as a threat to our country and worthy of investigation.
Finally, this is a violation of Americans’ right to due process under the Fourth Amendment, which states:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Americans are constitutionally protected from fishing expeditions or invasions of privacy based on some government agent’s suspicion or belief. In this case, the federal government told financial institutions to meticulously go through Americans’ purchases without cause for the purpose of flagging evidence of disfavored views.
In addition to the illegality of the government’s actions, this is simply nonsensical. Sporting goods stores such as Academy or Cabela’s sell far more than guns and ammunition. If you bought your kid a new pair of batting gloves, yourself a pair of shoes, a treadmill, a golf club, a grill, camping gear, or any of the numerous items such stores sell you could be labeled as a potential terrorist by such broad guidance. This is particularly odd considering that Dick’s Sporting Goods very publicly announced that it not only would stop selling most guns at many of its stores but it also destroyed millions of dollars worth of firearms.
The travel guidance may be even more suspect. What is an “apparent purpose” for travel? How would a financial institution determine that? If someone visited Washington D.C., is the bank supposed to assume they were there to plan a terror attack when they might simply be visiting an old friend? There is nothing illegal about traveling for an “apparent purpose” or no purpose at all.
The scope of product and store categories that could be deemed as indicating terrorist activity is so large that scores of purchases and millions of Americans were likely swept up in this asinine plot.
Sadly, however, this effort isn’t laughable, it’s actually scary. A government investigating and surveilling citizens based on their shopping habits is reminiscent of the Soviet Union or, even more comparably, the Chinese Communist Party.
In a free country, no government agency should have the power to unilaterally suspend the civil liberties of its citizens because of ideology or suspicion or a hunch — and certainly not without probable cause and a warrant. Americans have died for nearly 250 years to protect other Americans from being subjected to that type of tyrannical mindset.
There are some in Congress and on the left who believe this type of monitoring is warranted because it was in response to January 6. But as we’ve seen, once you unleash this type of governmental power, it doesn’t stop at your preferred ideology.
We’ve seen it used against parents and Catholics, as well as those who questioned COVID lockdowns and vaccines, pro-lifers protesting at abortion clinics, and those who simply criticized high-level government officials. And for those who think they have nothing to worry about because they have all the “right beliefs,” history tells us that, left unchecked, such powers grow to the point that they are eventually used on everyone — even those in leadership positions or viewed as loyal.
With all this mind, it is imperative that Congress get to the bottom of this financial surveillance program and then work together in a bipartisan fashion to discipline FinCen and other government officials for this type of illegal behavior and pass legislation that ensures it never happens again. Otherwise, they too may one day find their bank flagging their everyday purchases and an FBI SWAT team swooping in on their front door.
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