Another crypto convict is trying to curry favor from President Donald Trump.
Over a series of interviews with the New York Sun, Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO and cofounder of the failed crypto exchange FTX, signaled shifting sympathies to the GOP.
“I became really frustrated and disappointed with what I saw of Biden’s administration of the Democratic Party,” the onetime crypto billionaire said on a phone call from a Brooklyn prison.
The former crypto mogul also indicated support for Elon Musk’s efforts to gut the federal government and praised what he called the Tesla CEO’s “chainsaw approach” to bureaucracy. “Some things actually do need more than a 10% cut,” he said. “They need a 30, 50, 70% [cut], but of course they need to be rebuilt in the right way.”
Bankman-Fried, whose startup was once valued at $32 billion, is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence after a jury found him guilty in October 2023 of fraud and the misappropriation of $8 billion in customer funds from his crypto exchange.
Before FTX’s collapse in November 2022, Bankman-Fried was a prolific Democratic donor. But his Trump-ward shift in rhetoric isn’t necessarily a surprise. The parents of the FTX cofounder are angling for a presidential pardon, reported Bloomberg in January.
“I don’t think anyone was guilty,” Bankman-Fried told the New York Sun, in reference to his guilty verdict and the guilty pleas from his other FTX coconspirators.
If Bankman-Fried were pardoned, it wouldn’t be the first time Trump has looked kindly on a crypto criminal. Shortly after his inauguration, the 47th president pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder and operator of Silk Road, once one of the world’s largest dark web marketplaces. Ulbricht was a martyr for many in crypto for his role in catapulting Bitcoin into mainstream relevance. Silk Road users paid in the cryptocurrency to buy illegal drugs, among other illicit products.
And Bankman-Fried isn’t even the first FTX executive to angle for help from Trump. Ryan Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX’s Bahamas subsidiary, claimed he was the victim of political persecution from Biden’s Department of Justice. A staunch Republican, Salame told Bloomberg shortly before he reported for a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence in October that he was hoping the next president, who turned out to be Trump, would look favorably on his case.
Bad judge, bad DOJ
Bankman-Fried echoed other Trump talking points in his interview with the New York Sun. Like Salame, he decried “the politicization of the DOJ over the last decades,” which he said was “speeding up recently.”
Before Trump won a second term in 2024, federal prosecutors came after the current president for allegedly mishandling classified documents as well as working to subvert the results of the 2020 election. Trump has repeatedly said that former President Joe Biden weaponized and politicized the DOJ. Federal prosecutors dropped the two cases against Trump after his election.
Bankman-Fried highlighted that Lewis Kaplan, the judge who presided over his trial, also presided over a civil case against Trump, in which a jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll.
“I know President Trump had a lot of frustrations with Judge Kaplan,” said Bankman-Fried. “I certainly did as well.”
