A convicted techbro thinks Trump is his ticket out of a 25-year sentence

US President Donald Trump reacts during a Columbus Day celebration in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., US, October 9, 2026.

President Donald Trump adores felons with bottomless pockets, and now one of the tech industries most infamous felons is almost through the ribbon, reports Gizmodo.

“Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder about three years into a 25-year prison sentence for around $11 billion in fraud against FTX customers, investors, and lenders, presumably thinks the amount of time he’s served so far should just about square the bill,” said Gizmodo. “In a prison interview with The Economist’s “Money Talks podcast,” Bankman-Fried continued to insist on his innocence even as his lawyers argue the $11 billion forfeiture in the case (an amount basically equal to what he stole) should be thrown out on constitutional grounds.”

The BBC reported in June that Bankman-Fried’s lawyers were seeking a pardon from President Donald Trump. But now they are pursuing a petition before the Supreme Court while chasing Trump’s generosity.

“Donald Trump, … uses pardons as patronage and is happy to hand them out to other powerful men who claim to be victims of partisan lawfare,” reports Gizmodo. “Last year, Bankman-Fried began praising Trump’s wisdom on pardons on X, writing that ‘President Trump knows that, when you weaponize the DOJ, you start putting innocent people in prison.’

“Getting a pardon is “an uphill battle,” Bankman-Fried told Money Talks. “All I can do is put forward, you know, the truth as I see it, and hope that parties are more reflective, and that there’s less visceral reaction than there was before.”

But Gizmodo said that “The visceral reaction Bankman-Fried is referring to” is likely a U.S. Senate resolution to Trump urging the president not to pardon him—which was passed without opposition.

“For the record, Bankman-Fried’s transfer of $8 billion from FTX to his crypto trading firm, Alameda Research, was fraud," assures Gizmodo. “It was not normal margin trading, and his lawyers have already lost one appeal predicated on a similar argument.

Bankman-Fried told Economist hosts that FTX was “a legitimate and successful business,” but suffered a “run on the bank, which is a thing that happens with margin businesses. But Gizmodo writes that his supposed “run” came after FTX was already insolvent and Bankman-Fried had padded Alameda’s balance sheet with FTT, a worthless trade token that FTX cooked up itself.

“About the only thing this interview is effective evidence for is the thesis that money poisoning causes permanent brain damage,” added Gizmodo writer Tom McKay.

Meanwhile, critics like DOJ's former pardon attorney Liz Oyer, accuse have condemned Trump's approach to the clemency process and accuse him of abusing his Article II powers. Oyer and others claim Trump is using the "unfettered executive power" to grant pardons in a way that has served to "degrade, corrupt and politicize the justice system.

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