Sam Bankman-Fried's Work Continues Unabated
Though he’s serving a 25 year prison sentence— which he’s appealing— Sam Bankman-Fried was spectacularly successful at his little political project, having funneled over $100 million dollars to scores of politicians and their committees from both parties. The goal was to prevent serious oversight of the crypto-business and thanks to the members of Congress he bribed… mission accomplished.
He’s been in prisons in Oklahoma and Pennsylvania but the kind of money he managed to steal from FTX investors— billions (still unaccounted for), goes a long way, even behind bars. He’s back at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, ordered by Judge Lewis Kaplan, who asked that Bankman Fried remain in NYC “until his appeal has been fully briefed to facilitate access to appellate counsel.” Yeah… better than Oklahoma.
Meanwhile, the FTX principal tasked with funneling millions of dollars to Republicans, Ryan Salame, was sentenced to 7½ years in prison and yesterday Alexander Osipovich, reporting for the Wall Street Journal, wrote about some updates in the FTX conspiracy involving Bankman Fried, his crooked family and some of his other cronies. I want to remind you that the DWT perspective on this has always been that you can’t have someone handing out bribes to politicians without politicians accepting bribes. And no politicians have been charged with anything, not even the ones who took massive amounts and then delivered quid pro quos— like House GOP whip Tom Emmer (and his bipartisan Blockchain 8) and Senate crypto cheerleader Katie Britt.
Ryan Salame and Nishad Singh, have pleaded guilty to taking part in an illegal straw-donor scheme to mask the source of their contributions— likely a lesser charge than the massive congressional bribery conspiracy they helped Bankman Fried and his family run. “Salame,” wrote Osipovich, “steered money to Republicans so the FTX chief executive wouldn’t be associated with the contributions, while Singh backed liberal candidates, prosecutors say. In May, Judge Lewis Kaplan sentenced Salame to 7½ years in prison,” exceeding the five to seven years that prosecutors had recommended, citing the importance of election integrity in handing down the tougher-than-expected penalty. The 30-year-old is set to begin serving his sentence in August. Singh, 28, is still awaiting sentencing. Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison after a jury convicted him of multiple counts of fraud. Judge Kaplan called Salame’s crimes “astonishing. The state of our political life in this country is in jeopardy. Efforts like that undertaken by Mr. Salame and Bankman-Fried only make matters worse.”
Kaplan said a long sentence was necessary to send a message to wealthy people about “the consequences of perverting our electoral system and its rules [since Salame] knowingly and willfully assisted in destroying the limited transparency that the laws of the United States provide in this area.”
As part of his plea deal, Salame, a coke freak who got high with Donald Trump Jr, agreed to pay a $6 million fine and more than $5 million in restitution, and to forfeit two properties in Massachusetts, as well as his Porsche.
Seems like a lot? 8 billion stolen dollars are unaccounted for. That’s a lot of Porsches. Other revelations covered by Osipovich:
Bankman-Fried’s father advised on Salame’s withdrawals. In September 2022, Joe Bankman introduced the budding Republican megadonor to FTX’s tax lawyers at law firm Fenwick & West. He suggested that they discuss the tens of millions of dollars that Salame had withdrawn from Alameda Research, FTX’s affiliated crypto hedge fund.
“Alameda has distributed a lot of money to Ryan, which he has used to make political donations. (Ryan is the key employee who works on the other side of the aisle, as it were). Ryan and I talked about categorizing these as loans,” Bankman wrote in an email seen by The Journal.
Bankman, a Stanford Law School professor, was employed by FTX at the time. His remarks in the email are strong evidence that he knew about the illegal straw-donor scheme, said David Mason, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission who reviewed the emails for the Journal. “If Bankman knew about the contributions in the name of another while they were going on, he could be held directly liable as an accomplice,” Mason said.
“Mr. Bankman had no knowledge of any alleged campaign finance violations,” a spokesman for Bankman-Fried’s father said. Fenwick advised Salame on taxes rather than campaign-finance laws, a person familiar with the firm’s work said.
Gabriel Bankman-Fried directed many of the contributions. In a lengthy email thread from the summer of 2021, Sam Bankman-Fried’s younger brother Gabriel asked him to contribute to a who’s-who of Democratic politicians, such as Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Cory Booker of New Jersey, and groups such as the Democrat-aligned Senate Majority PAC.
In bullet-point lists, Gabriel spelled out the desired contributions and whether they should come from Sam’s personal fortune or FTX. Sam often replied with brief messages such as “done!”, while Salame handled many wire transfers, the emails show. Gabriel’s biggest ask was a $5 million gift to Guarding Against Pandemics, an advocacy group he created in 2020.
“Gabe’s political fundraising supported like-minded policymakers who saw pandemic prevention as among the most critical issues facing humanity,” said Michael Tremonte, a lawyer who represents Gabriel Bankman-Fried and his mother, Barbara Fried.
Bankman-Fried’s mother also directed spending from her son’s crypto fortune. “Hi Sam and Nishad: Can I hit you guys up for $92K (by tomorrow if at all possible!) to close the gaps on two projects we have committed to fund as part of our new Research Initiative?” Fried wrote in an August 2021 email.
She identified a pair of progressive-leaning groups, New Virginia Majority and Activate America. “Sure,” Bankman-Fried replied.
Fried was co-founder of Mind the Gap, a super political-action committee dedicated to helping Democrats win elections. Tremonte said she had advised hundreds of political donors. “There was nothing in any way inappropriate about her providing such advice,” he said.
Singh’s involvement was aimed, in part, at helping Sam Bankman-Fried save on taxes. In September 2021, Gabriel told Sam in an email that he would begin directing contributions by Singh— a maneuver that would help the FTX chief executive’s gift-tax obligations.
“I’m going to ask Nishad (in a separate thread) to make gifts publicly to politically-minded folks in our network…to save you gift tax $. The gifts will be in the hundreds of thousands to low million depending on the value of the person and the need for $,” Gabriel wrote.
Singh was friends with Gabriel from their school days in California. During Sam’s trial in October, Singh testified that he had initially embraced his role as a political donor but later became a more passive participant. “After some point in time, my role was to click a button,” Singh said.
Sam Bankman-Fried had dinner with Mitch McConnell. On Sept. 7, 2022, the FTX founder and Salame were preparing for a small dinner with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) at a Washington steakhouse. Their purpose was to urge the senators to redirect unspent federal Covid funds to fighting future pandemics, according to an unsigned memo prepared for the two FTX executives.
“If the Leader or Senator Collins speak, let them talk…Let them bring up crypto— if it comes up at all,” said the memo, which was included among the emails seen by The Journal.
The memo noted, for Bankman-Fried’s benefit, that there would be vegan options on the menu.
Meanwhile the influence—peddling operation has been taken up by several crypto-criminals operating <https://www.citizen.org/article/cryptobros-united-fairshake-super-pac-2024-elections/> successful political bribery operations<>— spending around $100 million to keep populating Congress with crypto-friendly criminals and frightening others into supporting their schemes. Key findings from the Public Citizen investigation and report:
Super PACs backed by the cryptocurrency sector have raised more than $102 million, the third-most of all super PACs engaged in the 2024 election, according data from Opensecrets.org. Only the super PAC backing Ron DeSantis’ failed presidential campaign and the super PAC backing Democratic Senate candidates have raised more money so far.
More than half of the crypto super PACs’ political war chests – about $54 million – comes from direct corporate expenditures, primarily Coinbase and Ripple Labs, showing the sector is taking full advantage of Citizens United-enabled unlimited corporate political spending.
Four of the eight corporate crypto super PAC donors have settled or are facing charges by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for alleged violations of securities laws. Ripple Labs alone is reportedly facing nearly $2 billion in penalties. Beating back regulations is among the super PAC backers’ stated goals.
The rest of the crypto super PACs’ political war chest comes from billionaire crypto executives and venture capitalists, including $11 million each from the founders of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, $5 million from the Winklevoss twins, and $1 million from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.
Out of the six 2024 primary races where the crypto super PACs intervened and which are now over, only one crypto-backed candidate has lost. Eleven primary races that include crypto-backed candidates remain.
The crypto super PACs have pledged to spend in general election Senate races in the battleground states of Ohio and Montana, which are seen as essential for securing a Senate majority. Democratic incumbents in both races have been critical of the crypto sector.
Among the candidates headed for DC in January who they now own are Jim Justice (R-WV) and Jim Banks (R-IN), on whom they lavished over $3 million each, Shomani Figures (D-AL), whose seat they spent $2.3 million on, Julie Johnson (D-TX), who they spent nearly a million dollars on and Tim Moore (R-NC), who’s primary was won with over half a million in crypto-loot. They also spent $10 million against Katie Porter to guarantee she wouldn’t win a Senate seat— and to send a message to other members of Congress: mess with us and you will see millions of dollars arrayed against you. They’ve also been spending big on crooked members of the Blockchain 8— especially Emmer ($118,034) and Gottheimer ($122,688).
They have made it known that they will spend any amount necessary to defeat Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and John Tester (D-MT), which will flip the Senate to the corrupt crypto-friendly Republicans.
So, yeah, Trump isn’t the only existential threat to democracy out there. Is anyone doing anything about these predators? Not that I’ve seen.
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