After initially telling Robert Malone to turn over “historical transactions” with his bank to continue receiving income from his Substack newsletter with 320,000 subscribers, the payment processor Stripe provided the prominent scientist an alternate option.
One week ago, Malone posted that Stripe was demanding he “provide all of [the] current and historic financial records associated with the bank account into which Stripe deposits Substack subscriber payments” within seven days, or it would ban Malone’s subscribers from paying him.
“We are now requesting that you link your bank account, which involves sharing details and activity relating to your bank account with Stripe,” says a Stripe email to Malone’s account that Malone’s attorney, Mark Meuser of Dhillon Law Group, forwarded to The Federalist. “This includes your current account balance and transactions, as well as historical transactions.” That would give Stripe access to every transaction that ever went through Malone’s linked bank account, even those that have nothing to do with Stripe’s payment processing.
Malone said in his post this could give Stripe “comprehensive information on all of my customers, patients and clients, all of my travel (historic and planned), all of my purchases, and any donations (and donor information).” He worried the spread of such private information would enable social credit-style punishments such as those congressional investigations have found federal agencies pushing financial institutions to implement against Americans who lawfully buy guns and Bibles. Malone and Meuser said they know of three other Substack authors who received similar
