Donald Trump’s IRS and Social Security chief allegedly used hi-tech software to spy on emails sent by colleagues during his time as an executive at JPMorgan Chase.
Frank Bisignano, 66, now oversees the two federal agencies that hold financial records on nearly every American taxpayer. The alleged spying, first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, dates to his tenure more than 10 years ago as the group’s co-chief operating officer.
The newspaper, citing people who worked with him, claims that Bisignano ordered his security team to run software that cracked open the inboxes of those he viewed as competition—among them, Charlie Scharf, then the bank’s consumer-banking head and now Wells Fargo’s chief executive.
His attorney, Courtney Forrest, said Bisignano “never directed anyone to look through any employee’s or executive’s communications.”
One executive who suspected the snooping slipped his own code phrase into a message, before Bisignano later recited it back to him, the Journal reported. Forrest said this claim was false.
He is also alleged to have had staff track employees’ keystrokes and personally pulled a confidential Federal Energy Regulatory Commission complaint about a disputed derivatives trade, which Bisignano’s attorney also said was not true. None of the claims involve improper access to customer data.
After he left, forensic teams found electronic evidence that his staff had accessed sensitive records and messages, the Journal reported. Successor Matt Zames then curbed access, requiring legal sign-off to open employee emails.
The newspaper claims that Bisignano’s apparent goal was to keep employees in line and weaken in-house rivals as he amassed power. He stashed dossiers on staff in a drawer, ready if anyone “went native”—a shorthand for disloyalty. His attorney, Forrest, said no such dossier existed.
The Journal reported that Jamie Dimon, the group’s powerful CEO, soured on Bisignano in late 2012 and told him to seek work elsewhere. Forrest said the JPMorgan chief did no such thing, and that Bisignano left willingly in 2013 for payments company First Data.
President Trump tapped Bisignano for Social Security, and the Senate confirmed him last year. He later added the IRS’s top operating job. Last Wednesday, Treasury handed him the rollout of Trump Accounts, tax-deferred savings for children.
The Daily Beast has contacted the IRS and the White House for comment on this story.
