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Oct. 5, 2023 - Epoch Times

20:17

Mike Lindell Sounds New Alarm

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	Good evening, and right before we dive into the main story, I'll quickly mention that if you are just sick and tired of all the censorship on this platform, as well as all the other platforms out there, and if you're looking for a source of honest, actual news, well, you're in luck, because the Epoch Times has just extended their awesome sale and subscriptions.
	Just 25 cents a week for the whole year, which, if you do the math, works itself out to just be a single dollar a month.
	And so, if you'd like an honest source of news, which is oftentimes completely blacked out by the mainstream legacy outlets, well, consider trying a subscription for yourself.
	I'll throw a link to the sale page.
	It'll be right there at the very top of the description box below.
	I hope you check it out.
	Now, diving into the main topic.
	This right here is Mr.
	Mike Lindell, the founder and CEO of MyPillow.
	And if he looks familiar to you, that's likely because sometime in the last decade, you've been up late at night watching television and one of his infomercials popped up.
	Or, if you followed the aftermath of the 2020 election, you might have also gotten to know Mr.
	Lindell since he became a top advisor to President Trump, oftentimes speaking alongside him at different public rallies.
	However, more recently, Mr.
	Lindell has found himself in the crosshairs of some of the biggest players in the financial system.
	You see, just four days ago, Mike Lindell revealed the fact that his company is now facing five different IRS audits related to his employees who worked remotely during the COVID pandemic.
	Here's how he described what's happening currently to his business.
	It started in California.
	Now there's three other states that are coming at my pillow.
	They just keep attacking.
	Now they're going after our employees.
	They made it very personal.
	This is something that hasn't happened in 15 years.
	And all of a sudden, there's five IRS audits against my pillow in three different years.
	Now, what's really interesting to note here is that this announcement of his came just a single week after his company had been crippled by American Express, which, according to Mr.
	Lindell, cut MyPillow's credit line by about 90%.
	Here's what he said last week about what happened in regards to Amex.
	Quote, American Express, I wasn't going to say this.
	We've been with them 15 years, and we do all of our online marketing, all of our shipping with them, out of the blue.
	They took our credit line from a million dollars down to $100,000.
	Just crippled my pillow.
	Amex lowered the credit line for no reason, and no explanation was given.
	It just dropped it down last Tuesday.
	Now, we here at the Epoch Times reached out to American Express for comment on this particular case, but we have yet to hear back.
	Regardless, though, these incidents with the IRS and with American Express, they actually came on the heels of another cancellation.
	Back in January of last year, the Minnesota Bank& Trust, they decided to close all of Mr.
	Lindell's nine bank accounts after calling him a quote-unquote reputational risk.
	And this situation with Mr.
	Mike Lindell, where you have his bank close his personal accounts, His credit card processor slashes credit by about 90%, and then the IRS launched several different audits against him.
	Well, it all appears to be a microcosm of what's happening more broadly to conservatives across the whole world, the at least perceived weaponization of the financial system as well as debanking.
	You see, outside of this one case with Mr.
	Mike Lindell, over the past two to five years now, there have been dozens of examples where major financial institutions debank both organizations as well as private individuals seemingly because of their political beliefs or sometimes their social beliefs are not in line with the prevailing narrative.
	And this phenomenon, it is not limited only to America.
	For instance, you might remember how over in Canada, there was a large protest of truckers who came out to oppose the COVID vaccine mandates.
	Thousands of people who agreed with the truckers, they donated money to them through a GoFundMe campaign Only to have that money be frozen at the behest of the Canadian government, who then also went on to threaten to investigate the actual small donors.
	In fact, a few days after the government's decision was made public, you had the Canadian finance minister come out and in a press conference say that the freezing of the bank accounts of the Freedom Convoy participants was, quote, about stopping the financing of these illegal blockades.
	And that one decision, that one edict from the finance minister, it allowed for both corporate as well as for personal accounts to be suspended without the need for a court order.
	And the best part was that the Canadian banks, they were all too willing to comply.
	And it's not only Canada.
	Over in the UK, you had a similar case with Mr.
	Nigel Farage, who is the former populist leader of the Brexit party.
	He had his bank account suddenly closed by Coots Bank.
	Now, because Mr.
	Farage had such a large platform, he was able to take the story public, which launched an investigation into the bank, which eventually revealed the reason that his accounts were closed, because his personal views were at odds with so-called inclusivity.
	But this is where the story in the UK takes a wildly different turn from that over in Canada.
	Because unlike the Canadian government, which appears to be all too ready to utilize debanking as a method themselves, the government of the UK actually fought back.
	This whole incident with Mr.
	Farage resulted in a bipartisan effort wherein the British lawmakers essentially forced the UK agency who's in charge of regulating the financial sector to send letters to 20 of the largest banks, demanding to know how many customer accounts have been closed, as well as the reasons for why they were closed.
	Now, whether this step of theirs actually does anything, only time will tell.
	But what we have here is a tale of two countries.
	On the one hand, you have Canada, which seems perfectly content To continue down the path of government censorship and total control of the narrative through the use of debanking private individuals.
	But on the other hand, you have the case of the United Kingdom, where politicians from across the political aisle, they came together to say that having access to a bank should not be a partisan issue, and they took at least somewhat of a meaningful action to resolve the problem.
	And so, the question before us is which of these two paths will America take?
	Because right now, America seems to be at a bit of a fork in the road when it comes to the question of debanking citizens for political reasons.
	And how we move forward in this particular respect will very likely shape the very future of our republic.
	In fact, I think that Mr.
	J.D. Vance, the junior senator from Ohio, summed up the gravity of the situation quite well when he wrote this, quote, The next stage of deplatforming will be denying people access to the financial system.
	The Second Amendment will mean little if Visa won't let you buy ammunition.
	Likewise, we here at the Epoch Times recently had the opportunity to ask the director of the Socialism Research Center at the Heartland Institute about this whole issue, and here's what he told us.
	Quote, There is a mountain of evidence that shows many of America's largest and most powerful banks are discriminating against customers because of their ideological, social, cultural, religious, or political views.
	Through various environmental, social, and governance, or ESG policies, and frameworks, banks regularly choose to screen out customers who are deemed, quote-unquote, reputational risks or consider part of industries disfavored by elites and their powerful institutions.
	Right, a quick question for you.
	If right now, you were told that you and your family can no longer buy any more food, the supermarket store shelves are empty, all the supply chains have been disrupted, you just have to make do with whatever you already have.
	Well, in that situation, how long would you last?
	A week?
	A month?
	Maybe half a year?
	Well, that question is very important because you never know if or, frankly, when something like that happens.
	And as the old saying goes, it's better to be a full year early than a single day late.
	And so the time to stock up on emergency food is today.
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	And what he said there is quite accurate.
	In fact, let me give you a brief timeline of how this debanking has become more and more prolific over the course of the last few years.
	Back in September of 2018, it was a rather big deal when PayPal announced that they will no longer be allowing Alex Jones, as well as Infowars, to use their services.
	Their claim was that after they conducted a review, they found that Alex Jones, quote...
	Promoted hate and discriminatory intolerance.
	Now, this ban came seemingly out of nowhere, given the fact that back then, financial institutions banning people who they didn't agree with was not really in the cultural zeitgeist.
	However, this was only the first case of many, because the very next month, which was October of 2018, PayPal also banned the social media platform known as Gab.
	This particular ban, it came after it was revealed that the shooter in the attack on a synagogue over in Philadelphia was posting anti-Semitic notes over on Gap's platform.
	But if you think about it, it's really wild for them to have done this.
	And it shows just how easy it is for these financial institutions to ban people and to ban companies that they don't agree with, while at the same time ignoring the wrongdoings of companies that they do agree with.
	And so, for instance, in this case, PayPal decided to block the Free Speech Gap platform because a shooter had been posting anti-Semitic things on there prior to him committing a crime.
	However, they have not blocked Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, despite the fact that criminals repeatedly live-stream themselves committing crimes on those platforms.
	And so it goes to show how these rules can be selectively used to justify cutting off funding for whoever you happen to not agree with.
	And this particular practice had only accelerated in the year 2021.
	In January, you had the online payment processing service called Stripe decide to stop processing any payments to either the Trump campaign website as well as their different online fundraising efforts.
	This came after the events of January 6th.
	Then, in June of 2021, you had Wells Fargo make the quote-unquote business decision to close the personal account of Ms.
	Lauren Witzke, who was a Republican Senate candidate out in the state of Delaware.
	And although Wells Fargo did not give any official explanation as to why they decided to close her account, it did come at almost the same time Then,
	in July of 2021, you had PayPal partner with the Anti-Defamation League to, quote-unquote, Now, when this partnership of theirs was first announced, The president of the ADL, he came out and he was quoted as saying this,
	quote, With extremist threats meaning, well, whatever the ADL decides them to mean.
	Later, in that very same month, You had a credit card processor, which was owned by Chase, terminated the account of an organization called Family Council.
	Now, Family Council is a non-profit lobbying group working on pro-life and religious freedom issues.
	And what happened was that after two years of using this particular payment processor, they one morning received a message which said the following, quote, Unfortunately, we can no longer support your business.
	We wish you all the luck in the future and hope that you find a processor that better fits your payment processing needs.
	And exactly one minute after they received that message, their account was terminated, and they could no longer accept donations online.
	Then, on the very next month, which is August of 2021, Chase Bank sent a letter to a three-star general and the former National Security Advisor, Mr.
	Michael Flynn, informing him that his personal bank accounts were closed due to a possible reputational risk to the bank.
	However, after General Flynn made this letter public, well, the backlash was so severe that Chase Bank was actually forced to post an apology just two days later, saying that the initial letter was sent by mistake.
	Regardless, though, this does not stop the pattern of debanking from continuing to roll on.
	In November of 2021, a payment processor that's owned by JPMorgan Chase, they decided to cut ties with an organization called the Defense of Liberty.
	And they did so on such short notice that it forced this organization to cancel an event That had been said to feature Donald Trump Jr.
	Now, in explaining the abrupt termination of services, here was what this payment processor, again owned by Chase, sent to this conservative organization.
	Quote, It seems you're using WePay payments for one or more of the activities prohibited by our terms of service.
	More specifically, per our terms of service, we are unable to process for hate, violence, racial intolerance, terrorism, the financial exploitation of a crime, or items or activities that encourage, promote, facilitate, or instruct others regarding the same.
	However, as a response, Mr.
	Paul Kurtman, the founder of the Defense of Liberty, he said the following, quote, I can't think of a single instance where anything we have done at any one of these events violates one of their terms of service.
	They're trying to shut us down because they don't like our politics.
	And this particular incident, it garnered enough media coverage that it actually prompted the Missouri state treasurer, Mr.
	Scott Fitzpatrick, to write a letter to the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, accusing them of discriminating based on political ideology, and he threatened to have his entire state drop doing business with the bank.
	Here's what he wrote in his letter, again, to the CEO of JPMorgan Chase.
	And this was no small threat, given the fact that Missouri's state and local pension system is worth around $82.7 billion.
	Which might explain why.
	Soon after receiving that letter, well, JPMorgan Chase quickly reversed course and they issued a statement saying that the debanking of the Defense of Liberty organization was a mistake.
	Here was the statement, quote, After further review, we determined that this organization did not violate the terms of service and we are reaching out to the client to discuss reinstating the account.
	To be clear, we have never and would never close an account due to a client's political affiliation.
	It's amazing to see how quickly the issue can be resolved when a cool $82 billion was suddenly on the line.
	Regardless, you fast forward to April of 2022, and you had JPMorgan Chase at it again.
	What happened was that Mr.
	Sam Brownback, who was a former U.S. Senator, he was the former Governor of Kansas, and he was the former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, he co-founded an organization called the National Committee for Religious Freedom.
	And this was a bipartisan organization whose board members included Christians, Hindus, Mormons, Jews, and Muslims, all working together to, quote, protect the right to the free exercise of faith for all Americans.
	And so, in April of 2022, They opened a bank account for this new organization over at JPMorgan Chase.
	However, just three short weeks later, the account was suddenly closed.
	Now, Mr.
	Brownback, he received a letter from Chase Bank saying they no longer wished to engage with his group.
	But this is where the story gets, you can say, wild.
	Because Mr.
	Brownback was then told by the bank that his accounts could be reopened, but only if he provided JPMorgan Chase with a list of the names of the donors to his organization As well as the names of the political candidates that the organization intended to support.
	Meaning that the bank would only allow them to have an account there if they agreed with the political candidates that they wished to support.
	Here is in fact how Mr.
	Brownback himself gave an account of what happened.
	Well, we started the National Committee for Religious Freedom earlier this year.
	We opened a bank account with Chase Bank.
	And put funds in it.
	And then we just started the process of building the organization up, a brand new organization.
	And we find out less than six weeks in it, we go to make another deposit in it, and they said, your bank account's been canceled.
	We'll be sending you back your funds.
	That's it.
	And we're stunned.
	We're kind of, well, why?
	What happened?
	And repeated efforts to contact people.
	We were told, well, the decision was made at corporate level.
	It's secret.
	We're not going to tell you about it.
	And it's irrevocable.
	And that's it.
	Goodbye.
	That was what we got.
	Now, they did come back to you and say that they would reconsider, but only if you would provide your donor list and what candidates, if any, you would be supporting.
	Yeah.
	And you're going, that's not required under the law, and you wouldn't require that of other groups.
	And to my knowledge, you don't require that of other groups.
	Now, maybe they do.
	But we, by that point in time, had found another bank and went to another place.
	And so this is where we currently stand.
	There are, by the way, dozens more examples just like these.
	In today's episode, we only highlighted the more prominent examples.
	In fact, it is a great big question of how many of these accounts actually get closed for political reasons just without anyone knowing about it.
	Because those smaller accounts don't have a platform to tell the whole world about what's happening.
	And so the accounts that we do know about, they are probably really only the tip of the iceberg.
	Although, there are some people who argue that since these are private companies after all, well, these banks, they are free to do business with whoever they choose.
	And also, they are free to not do business with whoever they choose not to do business with.
	Which is true.
	Except for one, you can say, ironic fact.
	Which is that the banks which are leading this debanking effort happen to also be the banks that are too big to fail.
	Meaning, these are the very financial institutions which have gotten bailed out time and time again by the American taxpayers.
	And yet, despite the fact that the tax dollars of all Americans were being used to backstop these financial institutions, what appears to be happening is that these financial institutions then turned around and began to weaponize their financial services in order to cut off the people with views who they didn't like.
	It's beginning to look a lot like a Chinese social credit system with just a few extra steps.
	And the only serious challenge to this debanking phenomenon, well, it appears to be what we saw out in the state of Missouri, wherein you had the state's treasurer use the $82 billion worth of state pension funds to essentially give the bank an ultimatum, either continue to censor Americans or keep the $82 billion in your account.
	But you can only choose one.
	We'll have to see whether the state treasurers of any other states try this approach as well.
	Until then, if you'd like to go deeper into anything that we discussed in today's episode, I'll throw the links to all my research notes and they'll be down in the description box below this video for you to peruse at your own leisure.
	And then also, I'd love to give a big shout out to Mr.
	Eric Schumacher, our intrepid researcher who helped pull a lot of this data together and form that timeline of events.
	In fact, he went so deep into exposing this debanking phenomenon That I think it might be difficult for him to open a new bank account anytime soon.
	He'll probably have to make do by bartering with seashells and gold nuggets.
	Welcome to the club.
	And then lastly, if you are just sick and tired of all the censorship on this platform, with or without the government and the bank's involvement, well, you're in luck.
	Because the Epoch Times has recently extended their awesome sale and subscriptions.
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	And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from The Epoch Times.

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