I wish someone had put together the a definitive list of all the members of Congress bought off by the crypto-cartel. I imagine that the Justice Department has done the meticulous work but it isn’t available as far as I can find. Just in the most well examined case alone— FTX— sources of bribes came from FTX directly, from FTX strawmen, from operations that FTX and its executives funded, like Protect Our Future, the DSCC and NRCC and from myriad PACs and state parties, and directly from FTX executive. Millions of dollars were funneled into the campaigns of both Democratic and Republican politicians, none of whom— not a single one— were charged with accepting bribes, even though several of the bribers, like Sam Bankman Fried, Caroline Ellison and Ryan Salame are in prison. Do you find it odd that there can be bribes but not bribees?
Take Protect our Future PAC, a fake environmental PAC, run by Sam Bankman Fried’s felonious brother Gabe. Sam Bankman Fried donated at least $19 million and one of his FTX lieutenants, Nishad Singh, kicked in another million. The PAC primarily financed independent expenditures for easily corruptible corporate Democrats in primaries against progressives, starting with an Ohio primary pitting corporate Democrat sleazeball Shontel Brown against Nina Turner ($1,010,178). Other less progressive candidates they spent for against more progressive candidates included Nikki Budzinski (IL), Francis Conole (NY), Carrick Flynn (OR), Valerie Foushee (NC), Maxwell Frost (FL), Robert Garcia (CA), Adam Hollier (MI), Sydney Kamlager (CA), Josh Lafazan (NY), Morgan McGarvey (KY), Rob Menendez (NJ), Jared Moskowitz (FL) and Andrea Salinas (OR).
This week, there was a low-key report from CNN that Ryan Salame and Caroline Ellison, have both had time shaved off their prison sentences. Salame had been sentenced to seven and a half years and it looks like he’ll be serving just 6 years. Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s former girlfriend and the former CEO of FTX’s hedge fund arm, Alameda Research, was sentenced to just 2 years and she’ll be out a few months before her sentenced is up. Bankman Fried was sentenced to 25 years and he’s still on track to serve that, although I suspect that Trump will eventually pardon him.
Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison, does not have a release date listed on the prison’s website. The massive crypto-fraud he directed included stealing between $8 and 10 billion, some of which crooked Bankman Fried family members— particularly this predatory parents who also belong in prison— have never been recovered and is tied up in law suits. So $2 billion just not even accounted for, in terms of being stolen or not— that’s 2 billion with a b.
You can see why— even since Bankman Friend and his cronies were marched off to prison cells— the crypto-cartel was willing to spend tens of millions of dollars to defeat honest members of Congress and help replace them them with corrupt scumbags, while strengthening the relative power positions of some of the most corrupt politicians in the country, from Democrats Ritchie Torres (NY), Adam Schiff (CA), Pete Aguilar (CA), Darren Soto (FL), and Josh Gottheimer (NJ) to Republicans Tom Emmer (MN), French Hill (AR), Byron Donalds (FL), Katie Britt (AL) and Bernie Moreno (OH).
Until there are strong, clear, accountable and punishable limits on political funding we are doomed. I guess we are doomed.
It is rather iffy whether we can keep our democracy. The Founders could not possibly have predicted what the weaknesses they (somewhat) unintentionally built into the Constitution would result in - the Electoral College, life long judicial appointments, no term limits on Congressional seats, no clear means of enforcing Constitutional mandates, amendments and statues, the tilting of power in the Senate towards states with few citizens, enforcing keeping religion out of our secular system, etc., etc.. Ben Franklin would not be surprised.