Biden's DOJ drops charges of political campaign violations against disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has been prosecuted for fraud by the federal government, but the charged he faced for political campaign finance violations have been dropped by federal prosecutors. Bankman-Fried donated millions to political campaigns, both Democrat and Republican.

Five charges against Bankman-Fried were already dropped in August. These charges included bank fraud and bribing a foreign government.

Bankman-Fried donated $5.2 million to President Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign. Bankman-Fried was indicted on charges of using over $100 million in customer funds to donate to Democrat campaigns. "He leveraged this influence, in turn, to lobby Congress and regulatory agencies to support legislation and regulation he believed would make it easier for FTX to continue to accept customer deposits and grow," the indictment read in August.

The letter submitted to Judge Lewis A Kaplan in the case of the United States v. Samuel Bankman-Fried reads that the federal government "does not plan to proceed with a second trial," going on to say that "much of the evidence that would be offered in a second trial was already offered in the first trial and can be considered by the Court at the defendant's March 2024 sentencing."

Citing the "strong public interest in a prompt resolution of this matter," the prosecution states that "the Government intends to proceed to sentencing on the counts for which the defendant was convicted at trial."

Bankman-Fried was charged, the letter states, with "two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

"Count Eight of the Original Indictment charged the defendant to commit unlawful campaign contributions." That count will not be prosecuted. If he had been tried on that charge, it would have been revealed just how many politicians received his ill-gotten gains and perhaps those elected leaders and politicians would have been pressured to return the funds to those customers who were bilked out of their investments by FTX and Bankman-Fried.

The letter from federal prosecutors indicates that when Bankman-Fried was extradited from The Bahamas, where he had headquartered his business and himself, Count Eight was not included "in the counts for which it has extradited the defendant." Because "The Bahamas did not consent to trial on Count Eight," the US federal government was "prevented from proceeding to trial on Count Eight due to its treaty obligations with The Bahamas.

The prosecutor stated that "the Government offered evidence of the defendant's scheme to make unlawful campaign contributions" in service to obtaining a conviction for the other seven charges, for which Bankman-Fried was convicted.

United States Attorney Damian Williams also said, in conclusion, that the delay in sentencing that would be caused by a second trial on campaign finance fraud charges would leave the public and Bankman-Fried "in limbo concerning the consequences of conviction."

"The interest in avoiding delay weighs particularly heavy here, where the judgement will likely include orders or forfeiture and restitution for the victims of the defendant's crimes."

Restitution will, as a result of this, not be made by any of the politicians to whose campaigns Bankman-Fried donated, as he will not be tried on those grounds and those politicians will not be named.

"The SBF case became too high-profile for the DOJ to completely ignore, but they made sure laundering $100 million of customers’ money to Schumer, Biden, and McConnell and other dark money groups would never blow back on the 'elite.' Trump faces 700 years in federal prison, but America’s uniparty cabal just gave themselves a get out of jail free card. You’re witnessing DC corruption in realtime," Charlie Kirk said.

Bankman-Fried founded cryptocurrency exchange FTX. As part of the exchange, he issued his own FTX proprietary coin, which was able to be traded on the exchange. The coin became part of the holdings of his girlfriend's company, Alameda. Their holdings increased the value of the FTX coin, which in turn bolstered the value of Alameda holdings. Essentially, Bankman-Fried and girlfriend Caroline Ellison used the companies to inflate the value of each company.

In the fall of 2022, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, a competitor to Bankman-Fried, became suspicious of the value of his FTX coin and sought to dump it. When he did, many other customers did too, essentially causing a run on FTX. FTX did not have the funds to pay out—namely because the FTX coin was overvalued and because FTX had not held on to the money, but had loaned it, in part, to Alameda. Additionally, funds were siphoned by Bankman-Fried to the not-for-profit run by his brother that, among other things, made campaign contributions to elected leaders who Bankman-Fried felt would be friendly when it came to regulation of the crypto industry.