There are a few reasons why a bank would cancel someone’s credit cards. They may think there’s fraudulent activity on your card(s), or you’ve reported as much to them (but then they usually just close that account and open a new one). If you lie on your application, or don’t pay your bills, the bank may close your account. Or sometimes, a bank stops offering a card and gives you no option to convert to a different card.
However Chase just canceled all of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn’s Chase-branded credit cards, and it’s for a totally different reason.
They say he poses a “reputational risk” to their brand.
Flynn allegedly posted on his Telegram account on Sunday night that he received a letter from Chase’s Cardmember Services department, dated August 20th, that they are closing his credit card accounts, effective September 18th.
Update: We are closing your credit cards
After careful consideration, we decided to close your credit cards on September 18, 2021 because continuing the relationship creates possible reputational risk to our company.
You may receive additional account closing notifications if you have other accounts under a different name or address.
Flynn’s response, also on his Telegraph account, was:
Chase Bank has gone full blown woke! They need to deal with their own reputation instead of persecuting my family and I. DOJ dropped my case for their own egregious government misconduct, appears you weren’t that lucky with the DOJ. I guess my America First political views don’t align with yours. Your loss 💪🏼🙏🏼🇺🇸
In the above, Flynn refers to when the Justice Department, at the time run by William Barr, dropped its criminal case against him in mid-2020. About 2 hours before posting the letter from Chase, he posted two links to Chase-related scandals from 2019 and 2020.
Is it real?
As of this writing, Snopes says they had not yet been able to verify the letter’s authenticity. They claim they had reached out to Chase for more info, but a spokesperson for the bank said they weren’t going to comment on the issue.
Snopes mentioned that although the image can now be found all over the internet, it truly originated on Flynn’s personal Telegram account.
If it is real, why would Flynn be a reputational risk?
Also from Snopes:
Assuming this letter is real, it’s possible that Chase deemed Flynn a “reputational risk” as he pled guilty to lying to federal officials about his contacts with a Russian ambassador in 2017 (Flynn was later pardoned by former U.S. President Donald Trump), his statements in support of the QAnon conspiracy theory, or, more recently, his comments in June 2021 that seemingly encouraged people to stage a violent coup to overthrow the U.S. government. Flynn later released a statement saying that he has never advocated for a coup.
It’s also possible that Chase deemed Flynn a “reputational risk” due to questionable financial transactions. In 2017, for example, it was reported that Flynn’s consulting firm received more than $500,000 from the Turkish government while Flynn was serving as Trump’s national security adviser.
Understood.
Does anybody else wonder how many Ultimate Rewards he had?
UPDATE! There’s an update to this story! Check out this post, written a few days later!
Feature Photo: Gage Skidmore / Wikipedia
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
