Paul Kirtman The “Defense of Freedom” dinner has been held for ten years. Kirtman is a Marine Corps veteran who served as the infantry squad leader in Operation Enduring Freedom. After completing his military service, Paul served in the Missouri House of Representatives from 2011 to 2019.Currently, he is a financial services consultant and radio host (in NewsTalkSTL).
Defence of Liberty PAC was established in 2017, along with Curtman and Missouri Senator Bill Egger As a co-organizer, we continued to host these events, inviting various conservative/center-right local and state politicians and well-known speakers—the most recent one was in August 2021, Candace Owens.That event was very successful-there were more than 1,200 attendees-the group decided to wear Another event December-Donald Trump Jr. is the main attraction this time.
Tickets for this event will go on sale in late October. In order to process the ticket payment, PAC cooperated with WePay, a subsidiary of Chase Bank, and they have worked with them in previous events. Everything is fine, until two weeks ago, when WePay contacted Curtman and first stated that they needed some additional documents.Then, after Curtman provided the requested documents, suddenly Cut off relation.
On November 9, the company notified Kirtman to cancel the contract, refund the $30,000 ticket that had been paid, and no longer have business dealings with the group in the future.
The message refers to the entry under the heading “Illegal” in WePay List of prohibited activities.
“It appears that you are using WePay Payments for one or more activities prohibited by our terms of service,” said a copy of the message forwarded to The Independent. “More specifically: According to our terms of service, we cannot deal with economic exploitation of hatred, violence, racial intolerance, terrorism, crime, or encourage, promote, promote or guide others’ projects or activities related to this.”
You read that right: WePay asserted that the last speaker was an organization of African American women (Owens), and its upcoming event will be held at Cecilia S Johnson, The national director of RNC black participation, and its host directly participated struggle Terrorist activities involve “hatred, violence, racial intolerance, and terrorism.” (I have participated in several of these events, and I can assure you that this assertion is completely nonsense.)
Ten years ago, I hosted the first event to defend freedom, and since then I have hosted guests of different colors, nationalities, religions, etc.-but we all come together to promote our common values of personal and economic freedom.
We cannot cancel. We will not be stopped. @Bill Aiger— Paul Curtman (@paulcurtman) November 18, 2021
Kirtman talked about this on the local radio station in the past week.You can hear his recent interview on NewsTalkSTL here with here. But the fighting did not stop there.
Yesterday, Missouri Treasury Secretary Scott Fitzpatrick sent a copy of letter JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon questioned this decision. Fitzpatrick said in it:
The Defense of Freedom Speaker series began more than ten years ago and hosted conservative speakers from different backgrounds in eight public events, including Candice Owens, US Senator Roy Blunt, and Congressman Jay Sen Smith et al. In this ten-year history, no event has met the description of prohibited activities listed by WePay. The series provides opportunities for leading conservative thinkers to share ideas. Hatred, violence, racial intolerance, and terrorism run counter to the mission of Defence Freedom and its founder, Paul Kirtman, who provided admirable services to our country in the Marine Corps and deployed to the Middle East to support Operation Enduring Freedom.
Despite allegations of misconduct and suspension of services, to date, WePay has failed to provide any other information or details about the organization or how this incident falls into these disturbing categories.
Therefore, the only reasonable conclusion is that JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, has adopted customer discrimination based on its political ideology as its policy. By doing so, your institution is discriminating against the ideology that was supported by half of the country and 60% of the voting Missourians in the last election.
To bring his point home, Fitzpatrick continued:
As a private company, you are free to choose whom to do business with, but the policy of the Missouri Treasury Secretary’s Office is that Missouri will not do business with JP Morgan Chase or any other discriminatory financial institution as long as this discrimination continues. Will target customers based on mainstream political ideologies.
Fitzpatrick was a guest on Tucker Carlson’s show last night and elaborated:
Treasurer Fitzpatrick joins @塔克卡尔森 Discussed last night @WePay, Subsidiary @JPMorgan, Suspending services for a conservative group in Missouri. Watch to see how treasurers act ⬇️⬇️⬇️https://t.co/JQyFTJ1Hun
-Missouri Treasury Secretary Scott Fitzpatrick (@MOTreasurer) November 18, 2021
Then, WePay seems to have done a big face.
On Wednesday night, after the Independent reported that the event was cancelled and its reasons, a JPMorgan Chase spokesperson wrote in an email that the decision was a mistake.
“After further review, we determined that the organization did not violate the terms of service, and we are contacting customers to discuss account restoration,” the statement read. “What needs to be clear is that we have never and will never close accounts because of our clients’ political background.”
Oh.
As Kirtman in his interview With Mike Ferguson this morning, it’s too late now-the damage has been done. Organizations and events have lost two and a half weeks of sales, not to mention the use of heinous accusations to discredit the organization and events. Therefore, the event had to be postponed (hopefully it can be rescheduled in a few months). Curtman also pointed out that this will not only cause inconvenience, but will also directly affect venues and suppliers for hosting and hosting events.
The Secretary of the Treasury of Missouri was not the only official who noticed this question and asked for an answer. Attorney General Eric Schmidt issued his letter to Dimon today:
This nonsense of abolishing culture must stop.
JPMorgan Chase’s goal is a conservative political campaign in Missouri. Event sponsors were forced to cancel. This is unacceptable.
My letter @JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon. 👇 pic.twitter.com/TgC57hDFMl
— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) November 18, 2021
Schmidt asserted that the Missourians deserve an explanation, and urged Chase:
If JPMorgan Chase’s statement last night is true that it “never and will never close accounts due to the client’s political background”, then what is the reason for the cancellation? In addition, what measures has JP Morgan Chase taken to remedy this mistake and ensure that it will not discriminate against conservative incidents in the future.
In fact, as Curtman pointed out, even if opening/maintaining customer accounts based on their political affiliation is not Chase’s policy, Someone After having a certain degree of authority in the organization, I feel that I have enough power to make this call. It seems that they bought themselves some bad PR in the process.
When the Defence of Freedom Dinner was held—and it was going to be held (though not originally planned for December), I was told that it would be well attended. Some other payment processing companies will enjoy the profits and benefits of doing business with free-thinking Missourians.
