SBF Shocked By Democrats’ Crypto Stance Prior to FTX Collapse

1 week ago 7

The former CEO of FTX claimed that he had a better relationship with the Republican Party in the lead-up to his exchange's downfall.

Mar 6, 2025, 7:55 p.m. UTC

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried suggested on Thursday in an interview with conservative pundit Tucker Carlson that one of the reasons he’d been given a harsh prison sentence was because he was getting closer to the Republican Party in the lead-up to his arrest.

“One fact that might be relevant. In 2020 I was center-left and I gave to Biden's campaign," he said. "I was optimistic he'd be a sort of solid center-left President. I spent the next few years in [Washington] DC 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. And that started becoming known right around FTX’s collapse, so that probably played a role,” Bankman-Fried added.

Bankman-Fried was found guilty of multiple charges of fraud and conspiracy in March 2024 and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He made over $40 million in political donations to 196 members of Congress, including former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and former Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). In other words, 1 in 3 lawmakers took money from him.

During Bankman-Fried's lengthy trial, it was revealed that he'd mulled a number of potential ways to rehab his public image following the collapse of FTX. An undated Google Doc listed ideas such as "come out against the woke agenda" and "Go on Tucker Carlsen, come out as a republican." With the GOP now firmly in power in D.C., the latter idea has now seemingly come to fruition.

Bankman-Fried told Carlson that he’d never expected a whole lot from the Democrats but that he believed some lawmakers would prove thoughtful in both political parties. He criticized former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

Chair Gary Gensler, calling the agency “something out of a nightmare” during his tenure due to difficulties for crypto companies to come in and register.

Asked by Carlson whether he’d called in any favors from political figures during his trial, Bankman-Fried denied it. However, the 33-year-old's parents, former Stanford Law School professors Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman, have reportedly been meeting with lawyers and other people in U.S. President Donald Trump's orbit in an attempt to secure their son a presidential pardon.

“There’s a long story there. It involves a law firm that took a pretty unusual and active role in the case, before I even gave up control of FTX, before it was ever filed for bankruptcy, the DOJ had already made up its mind.”

The Google Doc unveiled during Bankman-Fried's trial also suggested he was planning to "talk about how the cartel of lawyers is destroying value and throwing entrepreneurs under the bus in order to cover up the incompetence of lawyers.”

Bankman-Fried recently posted a series of messages on social media about the difficulties of firing employees, in reference to the firings enacted by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Bankman-Fried was criticized by the crypto community for the posts, which were perceived as an attempt to ingratiate himself with the Trump administration.

Tom Carreras

Tom writes about markets, bitcoin mining and crypto adoption in Latin America. He has a bachelor's degree in English literature from McGill University, and can usually be found in Costa Rica. He holds BTC above CoinDesk's disclosure threshold of $1,000.

Cheyenne Ligon

On the news team at CoinDesk, Cheyenne focuses on crypto regulation and crime. Cheyenne is originally from Houston, Texas. She studied political science at Tulane University in Louisiana. In December 2021, she graduated from CUNY's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, where she focused on business and economics reporting. She has no significant crypto holdings.