U.S. President Donald Trump said in a recent wide-ranging interview that he has no plans to pardon ex-FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, despite the imprisoned executive’s attempts for a clemency order.
While speaking with the New York Times regarding his decision to decline pardon requests from several high-profile figures, including music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, Trump said he also didn’t intend to rescue Bankman-Fried from his 25-year fraud jail sentence.
A jury convicted SBF in November 2023 during the Biden administration on multiple fraud and conspiracy counts tied to stealing billions of customers’ funds from his now-defunct digital asset exchange, FTX. He was sentenced in March 2024 to 25 years in prison and is in the process of trying to appeal both the sentence and conviction.
The disgraced founder tried several potential ways to rehabilitate his public image following the collapse of FTX by cozying up with right-wing figures like Tucker Carlson, but it seems he has not made his case to President Trump, who is a major supporter of the crypto industry. Bankman-Fried’s parents, Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman, had reportedly held several meetings with lawyers and others considered to be in Trump’s circle in a bid to get their son a pardon.
Since Trump returned to office, he has pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the operator of the Silk Road darknet marketplace, who is fundamentally tied to Bitcoin’s early days. He has also exercised his presidential clemency powers to aid other notable crypto industry figures, including BitMEX’s co-founders and Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao.
In the same interview, Trump dismissed concerns about potential conflicts of interest with the crypto industry. The president and his family members have ties to the Bitcoin mining company American Bitcoin, the platform behind the USD1 stablecoin World Liberty Financial, and via his Official Trump memecoin.
“I got a lot of votes because I backed crypto, and I got to like it,” Trump told the New York Times. “China wanted it, and one of us was going to get it.”
Source: https://zycrypto.com/president-trump-says-no-pardon-for-jailed-ftx-founder-sam-bankman-fried/
