Amid UBS probe, Grassley asks Trump to declassify Nazi files

• Key insight: Sen. Chuck Grassley urged President Donald Trump to force federal agencies to declassify documents, raising the stakes in his yearslong pressure campaign against UBS and predecessor bank Credit Suisse.
• What's at stake: The push for executive action adds to the pressure on UBS, which has been locked in a dispute with an outside lawyer over the disclosure of certain historical documents.
• Expert quote: "We owe nothing less to the victims of one of the darkest periods of human history." — Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is calling on President Donald Trump to sign an executive order declassifying federal records related to Nazi war crimes — including those tied to Swiss banks' wartime customers.

In a July 22 letter, Grassley called on Trump to mandate that federal agencies release "all government records relating to Nazi war crimes" in accordance with the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. The request marks the next step in Grassley's yearslong investigation into Credit Suisse and its predecessor banks — now owned by UBS — which have been facing scrutiny over their World War II-era dealings with the Nazis.

Grassley also issued letters to 10 federal agencies requesting information and documentation by Aug. 5 regarding their compliance with the 1998 law. 

The Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act "reflected Congress's resolve that transparency, accountability, and historical truth are essential to preserving public confidence in government and ensuring that future generations understand the atrocities committed during World War II and the Holocaust," the senator wrote.

Spokespeople for the White House and UBS, which acquired Credit Suisse a few years ago, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

In his letter to the president, Grassley described a bipartisan investigation he has led since April 2023, saying it has revealed "previously undisclosed and unknown Nazi-linked accounts" at Credit Suisse. 

"This investigation, and other similar investigations into the Nazis and the Holocaust, have uncovered hundreds of undisclosed Nazi-linked accounts, the theft of money and gold, and the looting of treasured artwork," Grassley wrote to Trump.

In urging the president to take executive action, Grassley cited as precedent Trump's January 2025 order declassifying documents related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.

"A new E.O. mandating the release of any unreleased NWCDA material, to include classified information that ought to be reviewed for declassification, would reaffirm the importance of making these records public for posterity," Grassley continued. 

Grassley's letter to Trump comes 27 years after a $1.25 billion settlement Swiss banks reached with Jewish community groups, resolving litigation over accounts tied to Nazi-era theft. Seventeen organizations signed on, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center. For two decades, the 1999 settlement was treated as a closed matter.

That changed in 2020, when the Wiesenthal Center said it had identified roughly 12,000 names connected to Nazis in Argentina who had contributed to accounts at a Credit Suisse predecessor bank. Credit Suisse committed to further research, hired the consulting firm AlixPartners, and brought on Neil Barofsky, a former U.S. federal prosecutor, as an independent ombudsperson to oversee the review.

The probe, which is still ongoing, has been rocky at times. 

Credit Suisse fired Barofsky in 2022 after briefly pausing his work, then reinstated him after Grassley and other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed an interim report he had authored.

UBS took over the investigation when it acquired Credit Suisse in an emergency, government-brokered deal. More recently, Barofsky and UBS have been at odds over certain documents that UBS has withheld from him, citing attorney-client privilege.

In February, Barofsky told Congress that he needs full document access to finish his work. 

The dispute over the withheld documents has also been playing out in court. UBS has said it will turn over the disputed files to Barofsky if a U.S. judge confirms that any new revelations cannot lead to the reopening of the 1999 settlement. But in April, the judge rejected the bank's bid for an order that would have shielded it from potential lawsuits based on new revelations about Nazi-linked accounts.

"I encourage you to require executive agencies to review their files for additional records connected to the war crimes committed by the Nazis and for records that were not declassified for the purpose of making them public," Grassley wrote in his letter to Trump. "We owe nothing less to the victims of one of the darkest periods of human history."