More In The Adventures Of Scam Bankman-Greed-- And The Congress That Enabled Him

After some hesitation, Sam Bankman-Fried has now agreed to testify in front of the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday. He and his fellow FTX executives have showered most of the members— far beyond just the members of the Blockchain-8— with substantial bribes. None of the bribees will be recusing themselves. And Bankman-Fried won’t actually be there. He didn’t pay the Bahamian government and Bahamian officials tens of millions of dollars in protection money just to wander onto American soil where he would be likely to be arrested… or worse.

You’ve probably never seen more of a display of “witness” ass-kissing as you can see in the video above. That was the last time Bankman-Fried came before the committee and Tom Emmer— then head of the NRCC and eagerly sucking money out of FTX, now the #3 top Republican in their House leadership, a position bought and paid for with FTX money— “grilled” him. Maybe fellated would be a more accurate description? You be the judge. It's a startling lesson in how Republican Party governance and oversight works. It's worth watching.

Last week, we met the rest of the Bankman-Fried family, headed by his parents Barbara and Joseph, Stanford Law professors. His mother, Barbara was also running a crooked anti-progressive PAC— Mind the GAP PAC— financed, in part, by funds Sam looted from FTX and Alameda. Anyway, apparently Stanford, which never seems ashamed of having war criminals and serious misanthropes on their roster, tossed these two overboard. The father’s course on tax policy— his only course— was cancelled right around when it came out that the family acquired a $16.4 million Bahamian vacation home with stolen FTX funds (something between $8 billion and $32 billion— but who’s counting).

Outside of maybe Tom Emmer, no one seems to presume Bankman-Fried is innocent. “Bankman-Fried is being probed over allegations he manipulated the crypto market and mishandled customer funds. He's also been accused of orchestrating trades to undermine digital token Tether that risked a crypto crash. Now the crypto CEO is under fire from all sides, from Elon Musk and Bill Ackman to Shark Tank investor Mark Cuban. Here's what 8 influential figures have had to say about the FTX founder."

• Elon Musk tweeted that SBF should goi to prison: “Let's just give him an adult timeout in the big house & move on.”

• Mark Cuban: “I don't know all the details. But if I were him, I'd be afraid of going to jail for a long time.”

• Brain Armstrong (CEO of Coinbase): “It appears that a massive fraud was committed. I think that customer funds appear to have been moved over to his hedge fund that he owned 90% of, and that those customer funds were lost.”

• Bill Ackman (CEO of Pershing Square hedge fund): “The @FTX_Official fiasco is, at a minimum, the most egregious, large-scale case of business gross negligence that I have observed in my career, and that conclusion is reinforced by SBF's recent public statements.”

• Changpeng "CZ" Zhao (Binance CEO): “SBF perpetuated a narrative painting me and other people as the 'bad guys'. It was critical in maintaining the fantasy that he was a 'hero’… SBF is one of the greatest fraudsters in history, he is also a master manipulator when it comes to media and key opinion leaders. FTX killed themselves (and their users) because they stole billions of dollars of user funds. Period.”

• Mike Novogratz (CEO of Galaxy Investment Partners): “It was delusional. Let's be really clear. Sam was delusional about what happened and his culpability in it… They perpetuated a large fraud and it wasn't just Sam. You don't pull this off with one person.”

• Anna Sorokin (the fake Russian “heiress” and convicted scam-artist from Netflix’s Inventing Anna): “It's a Ponzi scheme, what he did. If he was a female, he'd either be portrayed as a total con or entirely inadequate and unfit, or both at the same time. Now he gets to play this awkward, nonthreatening, seemingly well-meaning earnest fellow who's trying to make it right by the customers.”

• John Ray (the new FTX CEO brought in to oversee the bankruptcy, like he did with Enron): “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.”

There are also half a dozen new members of Congress, who had already corrupted themselves with Bankman-Fried's loot even before they were elected. What a way to start a congressional career! This week Maxwell Frost (D-FL) was whining that a landlord in DC wouldn't rent to him-- I hope someone checked out that story-- but it wasn't lmore than a couple of months ago that Frost was being elected because of a million dollars in stolen FTX funds, courtesy of Bankman-Madoff.