Donald Trump has publicly announced his seemingly sudden plan to sue JPMorgan Chase during a lengthy rant directed at the bank’s CEO—and on-again, off-again friend—Jamie Dimon.
“A front page Article in The Fake News Wall Street Journal states, without any verification, that I offered Jamie Dimon, of JPMorgan Chase, the job of Fed Chairman,” Trump, 79, ranted during a Truth Social tirade on Saturday.
“This statement is totally untrue, there was never such an offer and, in fact, I’ll be suing JPMorgan Chase over the next two weeks for incorrectly and inappropriately DEBANKING me after the January 6th Protest, a protest that turned out to be correct for those doing the protesting — The Election was RIGGED!"
In between verbal smears aimed at The Wall Street Journal for their article about 69-year-old Dimon, Trump outlined that at no point was his banking frenemy considered for the role of treasury secretary. “Why would I give it to Jamie? No such offer was made there, or even thought of, either,” he wrote in part.
While Trump didn’t seem to clarify whether his anger was directed at Dimon alone or JPMorgan Chase as a whole, the president has had a vendetta against the bank since they closed some accounts connected to him in 2021 in a move Trump insisted was “discriminatory.”
Dimon also lead JPMorgan Chase in its decision not to fund Trump’s $400 million vanity ballroom, with the banker—whose net worth is $2.9 billion, according to Forbes—saying that connection to the project could come back to bite them.
“Since we do a lot of contracts with governments here and around the world, we have to be very careful how anything is perceived. And also, how the next DOJ is going to deal with it? So, we’re quite conscious of the risk we bear by doing anything, it looks like, you know, buying favors or anything like that,” he told CNN in November.
The duo almost seemed at peace once more until Dimon openly spoke out last week about the Trump administration’s decision to launch a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
Powell, 72, suggested that he had been targeted due to not “following the preferences of the president,” and Dimon didn’t appear to disagree.
The Financial Times reported that Dimon spoke of his “enormous respect” for Powell during a JPMorgan Chase press call, and added that the Fed must remain independent.
“Anything that chips away at that is probably not a great idea. And in my view, it will have the reverse consequences. It will raise inflation expectations and probably increase rates over time,” the businessman stated.
Trump may have taken Dimon’s comments to heart, clapping back on Tuesday: “I think it’s fine what I am doing . . . We should have lower rates. Jamie Dimon probably wants higher rates. Maybe he makes more money that way.”
