- FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried criticized Democrats and hinted at a growing relationship with the GOP. He made the statements in a jailhouse interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
- Bankman-Fried’s parents are reportedly looking into securing a pardon for their son from President Donald Trump.
- A judge sentenced Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison after he was found guilty of multiple fraud and conspiracy charges related to activity at his cryptocurrency exchange.
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Cryptocurrency convict Sam Bankman-Fried swung closer to the GOP in his surprise jailhouse interview with Tucker Carlson. He made comments distancing himself from Democrats and detailing his GOP ties and donations.
The comments come as his parents are reportedly looking into securing a pardon from President Donald Trump.
“In 2020, I was center left, and I gave to Biden’s campaign. I was optimistic he’d be a sort of solid center-left president,” Bankman-Fried told Carlson. “I spent the next few years in D.C., a lot. I made dozens of trips there and was really, really shocked by what I saw, not in a good direction, from the administration. By late 2022, I was giving to Republicans privately as much as Democrats.”
What happened at FTX in 2022?
It was in late 2022 that the crypto exchange Bankman-Fried founded, FTX, went bankrupt. A surge of FTX customers tried withdrawing funds after stories dropped about shady accounting at the exchange. FTX couldn’t meet the demand and collapsed.
Later, the man known as SBF was tried and convicted on multiple fraud and conspiracy charges for misappropriating customer funds to the tune of billions of dollars. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison by the same judge who presided over Trump’s sexual assault case brought by E. Jean Carroll.
SBF’s Tucker Carlson interview is part of his comeback plan
While SBF didn’t specifically say in his interview he changed his political POV from center left to right, everything else came directly from a line in his personal playbook brainstorming how to make a comeback.
In a Google doc he wrote from jail, one of his “random probably bad ideas” was to “Go on Tucker Carlsen, come out as a republican.”
His talking points included hinting that there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to his political contributions. He said by the time FTX collapsed, he was cozier with Republicans.
“I had a good relationship, probably better with Republicans in D.C. as with Democrats, by that point in time. Although that wasn’t public. It wouldn’t have been easy to see that from the outside,” SBF said.
Parents seeking pardon for SBF
Straight Arrow News previously reported that SBF’s parents, Stanford law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, are in talks with lawyers and others who have close ties to Trump.
Efforts to secure SBF’s clemency come after Trump pardoned another crypto criminal, Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. Trump has warmed to cryptocurrency causes and has vowed to make the U.S. the crypto capital of the world.
The headline-making Tucker Carlson interview came out Thursday, March 6, on SBF’s 33rd birthday. It was a surprise even to SBF’s crisis manager, who told Business Insider he quit in response.
‘I don’t think I was a criminal’
“Do you think you were the biggest criminal in the crypto business?” Carlson asked SBF.
“I don’t think I was a criminal. So certainly, the answer to that is no,” SBF replied.
The U.S. government disagrees.
“Samuel Bankman-Fried orchestrated one of the largest financial frauds in history, stealing over $8 billion of his customers’ money,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said. “His deliberate and ongoing lies demonstrated a brazen disregard for customers’ expectations and disrespect for the rule of law, all so that he could secretly use his customers’ money to expand his own power and influence.”
Prosecutors claim SBF used money he stole from FTX customers to make more than $100 million in political campaign contributions during the 2022 midterms.
If SBF serves his sentence in full, he’ll be in his 50s by the time he’s out of prison. He argues he’s innocent of the charges because FTX customers are getting all of their money back, plus interest.
