Capital One has for the first time said that its 2021 decision to close more than 300 Trump Organization bank accounts followed an anti-money laundering review, as it asked a court on Friday to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the business and Eric Trump.

According to court filings reported by Reuters, Capital One argued the account closures followed "months of analysis and a careful review" by its AMLteam in line with bank policies and regulatory guidance. The bank said it had not accused the Trump Organization of illegal money laundering, but maintained that "documents and Plaintiffs' own allegations make clear that Capital One closed Plaintiffs' accounts for anti-money laundering (AML) reasons."

The dispute centres on Capital One's decision to notify the Trump Organization in March 2021 that it would close more than 300 affiliated accounts. The Trump Organization and Eric Trump sued the bank in a Florida federal court in March 2025, alleging the accounts were closed because of the lender's "woke" beliefs and an effort to align with the political climate following the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

According to Reuters, the federal court in Miami has dismissed two previous versions of the complaint while allowing the plaintiffs to file amended pleadings. In its latest filing, submitted after an amended complaint in July, Capital One said the case "suffers from the same fundamental flaws as their prior two pleadings" and described allegations that the closures were politically motivated as "misguided" and "based on cherry-picked quotations unsupported by the full context" of documents before the court.

The bank added that "the transaction patterns identified by Capital One are among the types of activity flagged by federal banking guidance."

The case comes as President Donald Trump's administration continues to challenge what conservatives describe as politically motivated "debanking". Trump signed an executive order in August 2025 prohibiting discriminatory debanking practices and filed a separate lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase in January on similar grounds.

The latest case follows earlier disputes between Trump and major lenders. During his first term in 2019, Trump sued Capital One and Deutsche Bank in an attempt to block the release of financial records to Congress during an investigation led by Democratic lawmakers.

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