No Space for SBF on Trump’s Clemency List, White House Says

The former FTX CEO, now serving a 25-year federal sentence, has spent recent weeks amplifying pro-Trump messaging from prison, praising the administration’s crypto agenda, attacking what he calls a partisan prosecution and aligning himself with digital assets legislation such as the CLARITY Act.  

In one post on X, he described the bill as "a huge milestone for crypto and a huge achievement" for President Donald Trump, adding that he had previously pushed for similar efforts to curb the Securities and Exchange Commission's authority under Gary Gensler.

No clemency for SBF

Despite the public statements, the White House has made clear that there is no clemency on the table.  

Responding to a 25 Feb enquiry from Sandmark, the White House press office referred to remarks Trump made in January in an interview with The New York Times. When asked about several high-profile inmates, Trump said he had no plans to issue pardons for a group that included former New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and Bankman-Fried. The topic resurfaced this week in a separate report by Fortune.

From behind bars

Bankman-Fried’s social media activity is itself unusual. Although he is incarcerated at a low-security federal correctional institution in California, his X account has resumed posting regularly. According to statements on the account, the posts are written through a proxy via Bureau of Prisons-approved communications, meaning he is not tweeting directly but dictating content through authorized channels.

The former executive was convicted in November 2023 in federal court in Manhattan on seven criminal counts tied to the collapse of FTX, a cryptocurrencies exchange he founded.

Prosecutors argued, and the jury agreed, that he orchestrated a scheme to divert billions of dollars in customer funds from FTX to Alameda Research, the hedge fund he also controlled. Those funds were allegedly used to cover trading losses, make political donations, invest in venture deals and purchase real estate. His lawyers failed last year to appeal in court the fraud trial they described as 'one-sided'.

A long shot

Bankman-Fried’s public pivot looks less ideological and more strategic. Once one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent political donors, he now frames his prosecution as politically motivated and praises Trump for challenging what he calls an "activist" judiciary.

The Trump administration has exercised clemency powers in several high-profile crypto-related cases over the past year. Among them was Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who received presidential clemency after his guilty plea tied to that exchange operator's inadequate anti-money-laundering procedures.  

Trump also granted a full pardon to Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road darknet market, and extended clemency to executives associated with BitMEX, another exchange that had a run-in with US regulators during the Biden administration.