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Imprisoned crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried reportedly landed in solitary confinement after he praised the GOP in a jailhouse interview with Tucker Carlson in an apparent ploy to win a pardon from Donald Trump.
Bankman-Fried ended up in solitary after he failed to obtain permission for the interview from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, The New York Times reported Friday. The interview took place on a video call in a side room of the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center on Thursday, which was Bankman-Fried’s 33rd birthday.
Bankman-Fried appeared to attempt to curry favor with the GOP and Trump in the interview as he told Carlson that he began to turn his back on Democrats years ago and developed a better relationship with Republicans.
“I don’t think I’m a criminal,” he also told Carlson at prison, where he noted that fellow inmate Sean “Diddy” Combs, who has been charged with sex crimes, has been “kind” to him.
Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2023 after his conviction on seven counts of wire and securities fraud and money laundering in the collapse of his crypto exchange, FTX.
He misappropriated billions of dollars of customer funds deposited with FTX, defrauded FTX investors of more than $1.7bn, and defrauded lenders to his cryptocurrency trading fund Alameda of more than $1.3bn, according to the Department of Justice.
Bankman-Fried’s plans for a “comeback” as FTX was imploding was to “go on Tucker Carlsen, come out as Republican”, according to notes to himself revealed in an exhibit in the federal case against him.
He and his family have reportedly been stepping up a drive to win a pardon from Trump.
Bankman-Fried’s parents, Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried, both Stanford University law professors who are active in the Democratic Party, are consulting with Kory Langhofer, an Arizona lawyer who worked for Trump’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, The Times reported.
There’s no indication they have had any contact yet with Trump or with a close adviser, according to the newspaper.
Bankman-Fried told Carlson that he had a change of heart on Democrats.
“In 2020, I was center-left and I gave to Biden’s campaign. I was optimistic he would be a center-left president … [but] I was really, really shocked by what I saw there … and not in a good direction,” he said.
Bankman-Fried claimed he gradually developed a better relationship with Republicans, and underscored his deep pockets at the time. “By late 2022 I was giving to Republicans as much as Democrats,” he told Carlson.
In another bow to Republicans and Trump, Bankman-Fried co-wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post last month arguing that Mr Trump’s plans for a sovereign wealth fund could help “dramatically increase corporate productivity.”
As for Combs, who is on the same cellblock as Bankman-Fried, he said: “I’ve only seen one piece of him, which is Diddy in prison, and he’s been kind to people in the unit; he’s been kind to me, It’s a position no one wants to be in,” he added, apparently referring to imprisonment, or imprisonment facing the charges he’s facing.
Trump has already pardoned hordes of criminals, including some 1,500 MAGA supporters whom he hailed as “patriots” who stormed the nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021, to overturn the results of the presidential election of Joe Biden.
Dozens of the defendants also had prior convictions or pending charges for crimes including rape, sexual abuse of a minor, domestic violence, manslaughter, production of child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, according to records.
Some have since been re-arrested for outstanding crimes or new ones committed after their release.
Trump also recently pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the notorious Silk Road internet drug marketplace. He was serving a life sentence.
