- Sam Bankman-Fried is reportedly in solitary confinement following his interview with Tucker Carlson. Prison officials tell the New York Times the interview was not authorized. It’s unclear how SBF was able to communicate with the fired Fox News host.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s wide-ranging interview with Tucker Carlson has landed him in hot water with prison officials and some time in solitary confinement.
A report in the New York Times says the cofounder of defunct crypto exchange FTX was put in solitary confinement after the interview was posted. Prison officials did not confirm that or offer any details other than to say the interview was not approved.
The Bureau of Prisons regulates who is permitted to interact with prisoners and how those interactions take place. It’s unclear how SBF communicated with Carlson. During that talk, Bankman-Fried mentioned that he missed having tech gadgets at his disposal.
Bankman-Fried is currently serving a 25-year sentence for fraud after the collapse of FTX in 2022. He appears to be angling for a pardon from Trump, who recently pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. However, he has not formally requested one so far.
His parents, however, have reportedly been in touch with Kory Langhofer, an Arizona lawyer who previously worked on Trump’s presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020, which could give him some inroad on the process.
In the Carlson interview, SBF discussed serving time with disgraced rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, who is also being kept at the Metropolitan Detention Center, and called life in prison “soul-crushing.”
Bankman-Fried donated heavily to Democrats before his arrest, but told Carlson that by 2022, he was privately giving as much to Republicans as he was publicly giving to Democrats. He has also recently returned to Twitter/X to praise Elon Musk.