Trump Admin Hid Report Showing Wells Fargo Ripping Off Students

The Trump administration had produced a report showing that banking giant Wells Fargo was charging students higher interest rates than other borrowers, a practice that is not exactly allowed under current rules. But rather than releasing the report, Trump’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau decided to simply bury the report until Politico got their hands on it via a Freedom of Information Act Request. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains Wells Fargo’s scams.

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*This transcript was generate d by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The folks that Politico have gotten their hands on a report from the Trump administration showing that banking giant Wells Fargo has been ripping off college students across the United States for quite some time now. Now, the reason I say political got their hands on it is because the Trump administration didn't want to release it. In fact, they had actually completed this report a very long time ago and they buried it. Politico had to file a Freedom of Information Act request in order to get their hands on this report, showing just how corrupt Wells Fargo truly is and here's what we found out. First and foremost, this report was put together by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and yes, it says right there and their name, they're the bureau in the federal government that's supposed to be protecting consumers from financial scams and crimes, which is exactly what was outlined in this particular report that they decided not to release to the public and it's a big one.

Here's what happened. Wells Fargo, as other banks do, they make deals with colleges so that colleges will promote this bank to their students saying, hey, come get a student Visa card, a student Mastercard, debit card, whatever it is with this particular bank, they're one of our partners, you know, maybe you get a discount in the bookstore, the coffee shop here on campus, uh, whatever it is, use this bank instead of other banks. Wells Fargo is one of the banks that was paying colleges to go out there and tell their students to use their services instead of their competitors. And Wells Fargo was also charging in some instances more than four times the amount to students in annual fees than all of the other cards. In fact, Wells Fargo making up only 25 percent of the entire student debit card a racket. They still pulled in the majority, more than half of the annual fees that students in the United States we're paying.

This is not completely legal now, unfortunately under current rules, it's also not completely illegal. However, there are rules in place that structure the amount of annual fees that these cards are able to charge to students. Now, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, they didn't release it to the public because they felt they didn't need to. What they did was they sent it to the Department of Education and just let them handle it so now you can go out there and punish Wells Fargo if you want. You can revoke their, you know, ability to go to college campuses and sell their scam services to students. And the Department of Education didn't do anything with it. So we really have no way of knowing if this spokesperson from the CFPB actually did give the report to the Department of Education, which as we all know is overseen by Betsy DeVos. So there is a zero percent chance that any consequences will be felt by Wells Fargo.

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