CHARLESTON – West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is one of 20 state AGs opposing the Biden administration’s claim that state laws preventing de-banking are a “national security threat.”
Morrisey is part of a coalition led by Florida AG Ashley Moody saying this is another attempt to stoke confusion about state laws to advance extreme activist agendas.
“The Biden-Harris administration has pushed a radical agenda since its first day in office,” Moody said in an August 1 press release. “From open borders, to attacking gas stoves and washing machines, they now are attempting to use the power of the Treasury Department to accuse states that seek to protect their citizens from unjustified radical de-banking of being a national security threat.
“This is nothing more than another attempt to leverage the power of the federal government to achieve this administration’s destabilizing, activist agenda.”
The coalition issued the letter in response to U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen after it says the department of skirting its responsibility to serve political ends after the Treasury sent letters to some states about laws banning de-banking being a national security threat.
The coalition accuses the Treasury of fearmongering and stoking confusion, citing a recent letter Undersecretary Brian Nelson sent criticizing the state laws like Florida's and others being considered.
“No consumer or business should be denied services based on political beliefs or religious views or because of some arbitrary social credit score derived from ideological agendas,” the coalition states, also saying Nelson’s letter “deliberately misleads financial institutions about these state laws, for example, by falsely suggesting that laws such as Florida’s HB 989 would prohibit financial institutions from considering whether a consumer is associated with designated terrorist groups.
“On the contrary, laws like HB 989 ensure that financial institutions focus on true risk-based factors and stay out of the business of forcing radical social policies."
Additionally, the coalition also says the Treasury Department seemingly is now opposed to its own language of “denying any person a financial service … unless the denial is justified by such person’s quantified and documented failure to meet quantitative, impartial risk-based standards.”
“At the time, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network did not pose any objections to that language as creating a national security risk,” the coalition states. “Such an omission from criticism reveals that the department’s current criticisms are the product of political posturing rather than any genuine concern that prohibiting discrimination somehow endangers national security.”
Moody and the coalition of attorneys general are “looking forward to the day when federal regulators will focus on their statutory duties, rather than on advancing radical political causes.”
In addition to Morrisey, Moody is joined by the attorneys general of the following states in sending the response letter: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
Morrisey has a history of challenging the Biden administration for what he calls woke, radical and extreme efforts as well as measures he calls blatant examples of federal overreach.