In an effort to allow businesses who have been targeted by Operation Choke Point to come forward with their story, U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO-03) created a platform to share how they were affected.

Luetkemeyer created an email address for businesses to safely discuss their story. The email address is hosted through the U.S. House of Representatives servers. The information contained in the emails will not be shared with regulators or other parties without express written consent from the businesses. For those that want to share their story, the email address is chokepointstory@mail.house.gov.

“This platform was created so that if you own a business and have been affected by Operation Choke Point you can share your story so that I can continue to apply pressure to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Department of Justice, and other federal agencies who are applying unnecessary pressure on you,” Luetkemeyer said. “In addition, I encourage staff within the Department of Justice, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other federal agencies to use this as an opportunity to come forward and share their stories of the abuse happening inside the Administration in a safe manner.”

Operation Choke Point is an operation in which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Department of Justice intimidate financial institutions from offering financial services to certain licensed, legally-operating industries to which the government is opposed in an attempt to choke off those industries from our country’s banking systems. This government operation was first aimed at non-depository lenders but it has expanded to: ammunition and firearms sales; fireworks sales; tobacco sales; coin dealers; debt collectors; and pharmaceutical sales.