Counseling with a lawyer who has ties with President Trump. Approaching Washington’s interest teams representatives. And sitting for a prison interview with Tucker Carlson.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the frustrated encryption tycoon, who was once a leading democratic donor, launched a campaign to secure a favor from Trump’s administration, said six people with knowledge of the matter.
The effort was driven by a small group of Bankman-Fried supporters, including his parents, Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried, who are trying to help their son escape the 25-year prison sentence after being sentenced to fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.
There is no indication that the Bankman-Frieds and their allies have reached Mr Trump or discussed a possible favor with White House consultants.
But the impulse seems to benefit from Mr Trump’s approach. The President favored the applicants thanks to links to him – either personally or through lawyers and interest groups – and allegations of violating prosecutors who reflect his own complaints about the cases against him.
In the context of the effort effort, Mr Bankman and Mrs Fried, who are professors at the University of Stanford University and the long -term active Democrats, consult with Kory Langhofer, a lawyer for Arizona, who worked for the Presidential Campaigns of Trump 2016. Washington have also received a promotion from intermediaries who claim to be allies by Mr Bankman-fried, three people with knowledge of the situation.
Its supporters have also taken measures that appear to be favorable to seek Mr Trump in smaller ways. Mr Bankman, who has maintained a low profile from the FTX collapse, co-wrote a piece of opinion in the Washington Post last month, claiming that Mr Trump’s plans for a dominant fund could help “dramatically increase corporate productivity”.
Mr Bankman-Fried’s allies believe that they can highlight the defects in his prosecution with Mr Trump. “The prosecutor’s office reported a story about FTX and Sam Bankman who is not right,” said Langhofer. “If the public knew the full story they would see it differently.”
She returned over the phone on Thursday, Ms Fried refused to comment. Bloomberg News said in January that Mr Bankman-Fried’s parents met with people in Mr Trump’s orbit to work for a possible grace.
A White House spokesman refused to comment.
So far, the impulse does not seem to have gained attraction, people with knowledge of the matter. The only indication that Mr Bankman-Fried can make progress this week, when he got an audience with Mr Carlson, who is close to Mr Trump. On Thursday, the former host of Fox News published a 43-minute interview with Mr Bankman-Fried, recorded through a video call.
Speaking by the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, where he was held for the last 18 months, Mr Bankman-Fried has been wearing a dark brown outfit over a gray t-shirt and fell from a white mug. He made an indirect tar to Mr Trump, arguing that at the time of his arrest he was closer to the Republicans of Washington than to the Democrats. He expressed careful optimism about how Mr Trump would release the encryption industry.
“Changing the guard helps,” he said.
The prison office has strict rules on who is allowed to communicate with prisoners and which channels they can use. After an interview with Mr Carlson, Mr Bankman-Fried was placed in isolation, said a person who was informed of the situation.
A prison office spokesman said that “this particular interview was not approved”. He refused to comment on whether Mr Bankman-Fried, who returned 33 on Thursday, was in isolation.
Three years ago, Mr Bankman-Fried was a billionaire cryptographic executive who rushed to Tom Brady and Katy Perry and gave tens of millions of dollars to the Democrats.
Then, in November 2022, FTX collapsed. Federal prosecutors charge Mr Bankman-fired with a stealing of $ 8 billion by customers and committing fraud against investors and lenders of the company. In 2023, he was sentenced after a monthly trial and later sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Mr Bankman-Fried has retained his innocence. He appealed in September, arguing that the judge who supervised the case was biased against him.
The attempt to forgive represents an even more bold attempt to reverse his belief. Mr Bankman-Fried does not match the profile of someone that Mr Trump will instinctively forgive. The former encryption MP not only donated to the Democrats, but also expressed his opposition to Mr Trump. His belief was celebrated by Elon Musk, the president’s close adviser.
Mr Trump has also shown his willingness to grant leniency to people whose causes have resonated with him or who have access to the circle of his Republican allies. During the election campaign, he was enthusiastically supported by encryption executives, who prompted him to act on various political priorities. Among them: a favor for Ross Ulbricht, a hero of worship in the cryptographic world who serves a prison sentence in prison for the operation of the drug trafficking. Mr Trump issued Grace within a few days of his inauguration.
Since then, Mr Trump has taken further measures to strengthen the industry, ordering the creation of a national cryptocurrency reserve and inviting executives to the White House for a first peak “Crypto Summit”.
These conversations are unlikely to help Mr Bankman-Fried, who is widely misled in the world. But his allies believe that the elements of his case – and some of the people involved – could catch Mr Trump’s eye.
The judge who presented Mr Bankman-Fried’s trial, Lewis A. Kaplan, also oversees the defamation case filed against Mr Trump by the author E. Jean Carroll, who accused the president of the rape. (The jury eventually ordered Trump to pay Ms Carroll more than $ 80 million.) And one prosecutor in the FTX case was Danielle Sassoon, who resigned from the Federal Prosecutors’ Office in New York last month after the New York City Officials in Washington.
In court, Mr Bankman-Fried’s lawyers claimed that Judge Kaplan had illegally preventing him from presenting evidence that would contradict the prosecution of Ms Sassoon. This argument is the core of Mr Bankman-Fried’s case for leniency, a person familiar with the effort.
For months, Mr Bankman and Ms Fried have been consulted by Mr Langhofer, a former US prosecutor, who filed a lawsuit on behalf of Mr Trump’s campaign who questiones the counting of the 2020 elections in Arizona.
Mr Langhofer withdrew the electoral education when it became clear that the outcome of the case would be inadequate to overturn the results in the state. In a 2022 radio interview, Mr Trump expressed misery with his approach.
“When you look at Langhofer, I disagree with him as a lawyer,” he said. “I didn’t think he was a good lawyer to hire.”
Mr Bankman-Fried has slowly reappeared as a public number. Last week, he published in X for the first time since January 2023, reflecting Mr Trump’s redundancies throughout the federal workforce. He claimed that sometimes it was important to trigger people.
“It makes no sense to keep them, to do nothing,” he wrote.
The Biography Department of the Account was informed to read: “SBF’s words. A friend is shared.” On Thursday, the account published a link to Mr Carlson’s video, thanking him for conducting the interview.
The video has caused friction between Mr Bankman-Fried’s few remaining supporters. After being published, his long -term spokesman, Mark Botnick, resigned. Mr Botnick said he had learned about the interview only after being released online. Refused to comment further.
Maggie Haberman They contributed reports.
