This feature appears in the October ‘17 issue of NRA America’s 1st Freedom, one of the official journals of the National Rifle Association.
The U.S. Department of Justice under Attorney General Jeff Sessions has halted former President Barack Obama’s “Operation Choke Point,” which unfairly targeted those in businesses the administration didn’t favor, including the firearm industry.
“We share your view that law-abiding businesses should not be targeted simply for operating in an industry that a particular administration might disfavor,” Assistant Attorney General Stephen F. Boyd wrote to a congressional committee investigating the affair. “Enforcement decisions should always be made based on facts and the applicable law.”
Boyd added: “All of the Department’s bank investigations conducted as part of Operation Choke Point are now over. The initiative is no longer in effect, and it will not be undertaken again.”
In July, Republicans in Congress sent letters to the DOJ encouraging the department to halt the program. And they asked for an official statement indicating it had been discontinued.
House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, praised the decision in a joint statement issued with several other legislators.
“We applaud the Trump Justice Department for decisively ending Operation Choke Point,” they said. “The Obama administration created this ill-advised program to suffocate legitimate businesses to which it was ideologically opposed by intimidating financial institutions into denying banking services to those businesses.”
Operation Choke Point was started in 2013 and involved the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) pressuring banks to deny services to certain businesses the Obama administration found distasteful.
