Sam Bankman-Fried made news not just as the FTX founder but as the cryptocurrency mogul who fled the country and tried to hide in the Bahamas so that he would not face prosecution over crypto charges.
But as the Bahamas has an extradition policy with the United States, he was found, extradited, and is now in jail facing those very charges. There is now a book about Bankman-Fried and his escapades, and its author is making the rounds in media outlets.
Bankman-Fried was in the past a donor to both Democrats and Republicans, the book states. In fact, he considered trying to pay Donald Trump not to run in 2024, Michael Lewis wrote. Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX, once wondered if it would be legal to pay Donald Trump not to run for office in 2024 and how much it would cost, according to Lewis.
In a recent “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday, Lewis, author of “The Big Short” and a new book on the disgraced cryptocurrency exchange founder, “Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon,” revealed Bankman-Fried even got a potential dollar figure back, Business Insider reports.
“So he did get an answer,” Lewis said. “There was a number that was kicking around. And the number that was kicking around when I was talking to Sam about this was $5 billion.”
60 Minutes:
Michael Lewis reports that Sam Bankman-Fried considered paying Donald Trump not to run for president. He even got a number: $5 billion, but never learned if it was a serious figure that came from Trump himself. https://t.co/WtGO1TPP4A pic.twitter.com/WeKCNByiTk
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 1, 2023
Business Insider continued:
One of the ways Bankman-Fried spent his wealth was by making political donations. In the 2022 midterm elections, he donated $40 million to Democrats, but he has also admitted that he was a large Republican donor.
For 2024, Bankman-Fried wanted to make another contribution to the election but in a different way, according to “60 Minutes” correspondent Jon Wertheim.
“One of the most shocking passages in this book, I thought, came with this revelation that Sam had looked into paying Donald Trump not to run,” Wertheim said in an interview with Lewis.
Lewis said that Bankman-Fried never learned if the $5 billion number came directly from Trump. The FTX founder also wondered if paying Trump not to run would even be legal, according to Lewis.
But the answer from the former president’s camp put the lid on such a question.
“Isn’t Sam Bankman-Fried a liar who has been outed as a fraudster and someone that can’t be trusted,” Steven Cheung, Trump’s spokesperson, wrote in a brief response to an inquiry from Insider.
Reuters reports that in the excerpt published in the Washington Post, Lewis states in the book that Bankman-Fried at the time was planning to give $15 million to $30 million to Republican Senator Mitch McConnell to defeat the “Trumpier” candidates in the Senate races.
Just a few years ago, Bankman-Fried, or SBF, was a top name in the crypto world, holding at one point a net worth of $26.5 billion, according to Forbes. That status quickly came crashing down along with his entire crypto exchange empire in 2022, business Insider notes, adding,
“FTX’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing revealed how Bankman-Fried’s trading firm, Alameda Research, and its assets were dependent on FTX’s in-house crypto tokens as collateral. This created issues and spooked investors when crypto prices began to sink that year. Reports also revealed that FTX lent billions of dollars of customer funds to the trading firm.
“Bankman-Fried now sits in a Brooklyn detention center, facing seven federal charges, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit securities fraud and money laundering.”
He has pleaded not-guilty to seven counts of fraud and conspiracy stemming form the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse in November 2022.
Bankman-Fried faces a statutory maximum of 110 years in prison, though any sentence would be determined by the judge overseeing the case based on a range of factors, and speculation is that he would get far less.
Lewis’ book release coincides with the start of Bankman-Fried’s fraud trial this week, and with the various court proceedings involving former President Trump.
That someone in Bankman-Fried’s position wants former President Trump not to run in 2024 suggests that Trump being president would not be a good thing for someone who is trying to bend the rules for himself. The desperation of Bankman-Fried’s circumstances also sheds light on the plan.
Reuters notes that Mark Botnick, a spokesperson for Bankman-Fried, declined to comment on the excerpt from the book.
Lewis also remarked in the 60 minutes interview on other oddities regarding Bankman-Fried. He stated that Bankman-Fried paid athletes like Tom Brady and celebrities ridiculous amounts of money for endorsements including $55 million to Brady, for “20 hours a year for three years.”
Lewis also noted that during Bankman Fried’s first TV appearance, he was playing a videogame throughout the interview. “If you watch the clip you can see his eyes going back and forth, back (laughs) and forth. It’s because he’s trying to win his video game at the same time he’s on the air,” Lewis said according to a CBS News transcript.
The post Bombshell About Sam Bankman Fried’s $5 Billion Offer To Trump – He Said HELL NO appeared first on The Republic Brief.
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