{"id":7788,"date":"2026-06-17T18:48:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T18:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=7788"},"modified":"2026-06-17T18:48:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T18:48:18","slug":"sam-bankman-frieds-pardon-faces-bipartisan-pushback-in-congress-keep-him-locked-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=7788","title":{"rendered":"Sam Bankman-Fried\u2019s pardon faces bipartisan pushback in Congress: \u2018Keep him locked up\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Two senators don\u2019t want Sam Bankman-Fried out of prison. On Wednesday, Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz), introduced a resolution urging the executive branch to ignore the FTX cofounder\u2019s formal bid for a pardon. The resolution, which is not explicitly addressed to President Donald Trump, asserts that Bankman-Fried\u2019s 25-year-sentence \u201cserves the interests of justice\u201d and wasn\u2019t the product of an unfair investigation into the onetime crypto billionaire\u2019s crimes, which Bankman-Fried has claimed since his conviction.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSam Bankman-Fried has clearly ramped up his pardon campaign, and Senator Lummis wants Fried to know [she] and her colleagues think he\u2019s exactly where he belongs,\u201d a spokesperson from Lummis\u2019s office told Fortune<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Gallego agreed: \u201cHe has shown no remorse for his crimes and has instead tried to laughably claim he is a victim of \u2018lawfare.\u2019 What a joke. Keep him locked up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two members of Congress, who are both part of the Senate Banking Committee, say they aim to quickly pass the resolution, which cannot block a presidential pardon but would make clear that senators oppose Bankman-Fried\u2019s push for clemency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The push for clemency<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In 2023, Bankman-Fried was convicted of orchestrating one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history, siphoning billions of dollars in customer funds from the crypto exchange FTX into his trading firm, Alameda Research. He was found guilty on seven counts, including multiple fraud and money-laundering conspiracies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bankman-Fried\u2019s clemency push comes after Trump has granted a string of pardons to not only prominent crypto figures\u2014including Binance founder Changpeng Zhao and Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht\u2014but also other white-collar offenders, like former private equity executive David Gentile.<\/p>\n

Amid Trump\u2019s willingness to dole out pardons to crypto criminals, Bankman-Fried\u2019s parents have reportedly courted people in Trump\u2019s orbit in hopes of winning the president\u2019s favor\u2014a sharp turn for the FTX cofounder, who was once a mega-donor to Democrats. As part of that outreach, he even sat for an unauthorized prison interview with conservative TV host Tucker Carlson in March 2025.<\/p>\n

As of Wednesday, the Justice Department\u2019s public records showed Bankman-Fried\u2019s pardon request as \u201cpending.\u201d His clemency effort also comes after he exhausted key appeals in the courts, turning the White House into one of his last remaining avenues for relief.<\/p>\n

Still, his odds of a pardon remain slim. When asked whether Trump may clear Bankman-Fried of his sentence, a White House spokesperson pointed to Trump\u2019s comments in January, where the president said he had no plans to do so.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

#Sam #BankmanFrieds #pardon #faces #bipartisan #pushback #Congress #locked<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two senators don\u2019t want Sam Bankman-Fried out of prison. On Wednesday, Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz), introduced a resolution urging the executive branch to ignore the FTX… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10024,5696,1182,1307,1751,8807,5991,8810,1806,2444,8936],"class_list":["post-7788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-bankmanfrieds","tag-bipartisan","tag-congress","tag-cryptocurrency","tag-faces","tag-ftx","tag-locked","tag-pardon","tag-pushback","tag-sam","tag-sam-bankman-fried"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}