Conservative activist Laura Loomer and crypto attorney John E. Deaton ignited a fresh wave of controversy around Sam Bankman-Fried’s legal fate, alleging a “massive and well funded” push to secure presidential clemency for the convicted FTX founder. Their claims arrive against the hard legal backdrop of Bankman-Fried’s 25-year federal sentence and an $11 billion forfeiture order—facts that sharply constrain the practical pathways for any pardon or commutation bid.
She linked the surge in chatter to what she called an “inorganic” campaign by conservative influencers portraying Bankman-Fried as a victim after his reported stint in solitary confinement following a jailhouse interview with Tucker Carlson.
The legal record for SBF remains stark. On March 28, 2024, US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan sentenced Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison for orchestrating “multiple fraudulent schemes,” with the Southern District of New York securing an $11 billion forfeiture judgment—an enormous clawback that reflects what the court deemed to be the scale of customer, investor, and lender harms. The sentence followed a jury’s 2023 convictions on fraud and conspiracy counts tied to the wholesale misuse of FTX customer assets through Alameda Research.
Campaign-finance allegations have circulated around Bankman-Fried since 2022. In mid-2023, SDNY prosecutors dropped one campaign-finance charge on extradition grounds after the Bahamas—where Bankman-Fried was arrested—signaled it had not consented to extradition on that count. The federal fraud case then proceeded without that charge at trial, where jurors convicted across the remaining counts.
At press time, the total crypto market cap was at $3.8 trillion.
