Just down the street from our headquarters is a branch of TD Bank. The convenience of this branch made it a natural place for us to establish an account and with 75+ employees and millions of letters and emails flowing out of our office every year we moved what seemed like a lot of money through an otherwise a sleepy suburban branch of the bank.
Most Americans probably aren’t aware that TD Bank, the bank that advertises it is open on Saturday, is a Canadian-owned bank. And fewer still are likely aware of the role TD Bank is playing in the oppression of Canada’s freedom convoy truckers.
TD Bank, for reasons that remain unclear, on its own motion sought permission from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to freeze accounts holding funds to support the freedom convoy protesters. Reuters reported TD froze two personal bank accounts into which C$1.4 million ($1.1 million) had been deposited to support protesters fighting the Canadian government's pandemic measures, a bank spokesperson said.
“TD has asked the court to accept the funds, which were raised through crowdfunding and deposited into personal accounts at TD, so they may be managed and distributed in accordance with the intentions of the donors, and/or to be returned to the donors who have requested refunds but whose entitlement to a refund cannot be determined by TD,” said spokeswoman Carla Hindman.
Got that? TD Bank went to court to divert funds to the government that were intended to assist those protesting against the government.
Keith Wilson, a lawyer for the convoy, said in an email to Reuters, TD has been put "on notice that their actions are improper and disappointing," adding the convoy will seek a court order next week to release the donations to a new not-for-profit corporation that has been set up to manage and distribute them.
Needless to say, CHQ Chairman Richard A Viguerie and his management team weren’t waiting around for TD Bank to seize funds deposited to pay our employees or service our clients whose politics TD Bank may not agree with, so we immediately moved our funds out of TD.
The actions of TD Bank are part of a growing trend of Big Business to ally with Big Government to oppress those who oppose the establishment’s Far Left Progressive or “woke” policies.
Bank of America and Citigroup have become notorious for announcing they would stop lending money to gun manufacturers that make modern sporting rifles, like the AR-15. Later, Bank of America secretly turned over hundreds of its customers’ personal data to the federal government following the unrest at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The targeted customers included those who made purchases at “weapons-related merchants” in early January. The report suggested that the nation’s second largest bank turned the private information over voluntarily rather than in response to a subpoena. Bank of America’s willing collaboration with federal law enforcement at the expense of its customers highlights the broad threat posed by those that would commandeer ostensibly private banks and payment processors to undermine constitutional liberty.
But it isn’t just big Left Coast banks that have begun to screen clients for their politics. Mike Lindell, the founder and CEO of MyPillow, recently announced that he's been told by two financial institutions to "leave their bank." Lindell said Minnesota Bank & Trust and Heartland Financial USA told him they no longer wanted to do business with him.
"Why did they wait until now?" Mr. Lindell commented to The Business Insider. "There's something behind this, and we can't let everyone [conservatives] get debanked in our country."
As we explained in our January 17, 2021 article "They have opened the Gates of Hell and it’s a one-way passage" and “The Gates of Hell Crack Open Against The Canadian Truckers” this new alliance between Big Business and Big Government presents America’s elite with something they’ve always craved but which has been out of reach in a liberal democracy: the power to swiftly crush ideological opponents by silencing them and destroying their livelihoods.
The alliance between the media, progressive activists, certain government officials and bureaucrats, technology firms, and other powerful institutions like business and banking now allows the establishment to shape events by defunding protesters, doxing them, hounding them out of the public square and putting them and their supporters out of business.
And Mr. Viguerie wasn’t waiting around for that to happen to us, our clients, or our employees.
The TD Bank episode demonstrates once again the need for conservatives to establish their own liberty-based institutions. Trump’s Truth social media platform, GiveSendGo and AlignPay.com are two useful tools for liberty lovers, but we need more robust institutions, such as a liberty-loving bank, to protect us from actions such as TD Bank took against the freedom convoy and Bank of America took against J6 protesters.
Canada Trucker convoy
vaccine mandates
Joe Biden administration
Premier Justin Trudeau
TD Bank
Minnesota Bank & Trust
Heartland Financial USA
Mike Lindell
COVID lockdowns
Tucker Carlson
Australia protest
American trucker protest