President Donald Trump mentioned this week that he has no intention of pardoning Sam Bankman-Fried, the previous FTX chief government who’s serving a prolonged federal jail sentence for one of many largest monetary frauds in U.S. historical past.
In an interview with The New York Occasions, Trump was requested whether or not he would think about granting clemency to a number of high-profile inmates. Among the many names raised was Bankman-Fried, the onetime cryptocurrency billionaire convicted in 2023 of stealing billions of {dollars} from FTX prospects.
Trump’s response was that he’s not contemplating it, in keeping with The New York Occasions.
The comment places considerably of a cease to months of hypothesis inside crypto and political circles about whether or not Bankman-Fried may angle for aid from a president who has continuously criticized federal prosecutors and used his pardon energy aggressively.
Bankman-Fried was sentenced in November 2024 to 25 years in jail after a New York jury discovered him responsible on seven counts, together with wire fraud and conspiracy. Prosecutors mentioned he orchestrated a scheme that diverted buyer funds to prop up his hedge fund, Alameda Analysis, whereas presenting FTX as a secure and compliant alternate.
The collapse worn out billions in buyer property and triggered a worldwide crackdown on crypto companies.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s push for a pardon
Since his conviction, Bankman-Fried and people near him have pursued a number of avenues that appeared designed to melt his public picture and create openings for clemency.
In early 2024, Bankman-Fried gave a uncommon jailhouse interview to Tucker Carlson, portraying himself as misunderstood and claiming FTX prospects would have been “made complete” absent authorities intervention.
The interview circulated extensively amongst conservative audiences and was seen by many as a calculated attraction to Trump-aligned media figures.
Across the identical time, Bankman-Fried’s mother and father, each Stanford regulation professors, despatched letters to the courtroom looking for leniency at sentencing, emphasizing his charitable intentions and arguing {that a} decades-long jail time period can be extreme.
Whereas not directed at Trump, the trouble bolstered a broader technique of reframing Bankman-Fried as a flawed however non-malicious actor relatively than a felony mastermind.
Bankman-Fried has additionally highlighted his previous political realignment. Although he was one of many largest donors to Democrats within the 2022 cycle, he later claimed in interviews that he had secretly given comparable quantities to Republicans and had grown disillusioned with the Biden administration.
These feedback had been extensively interpreted as an try to distance himself from Democratic energy facilities and sign openness to a future Republican-led clemency course of.
Trump, nevertheless, has not proven any public sympathy. Whereas he has argued that allies prosecuted beneath the Biden administration had been victims of a “weaponized” Justice Division, Bankman-Fried’s case doesn’t match that narrative. The fraud investigation started earlier than Biden took workplace and was pushed by buyer losses and inner FTX information.
President Trump did pardon Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) in October 2025 for his 2023 responsible plea to cash laundering violations, a transfer framed by the White Home as ending the Biden administration’s “warfare on cryptocurrency” and a possible pathway for Binance to re-enter the U.S. market.
