This story doesn't mean anything. SBF has been "seeking" a pardon for over a year now. There's no due process consideration for obtaining a pardon; "applying" for one doesn't get you anything more than asking for one on Twitter would --- given the current administration, asking on Twitter might get you further! I don't think SBF's case is slipping the administration's mind.
Giuliani was hawking pardons in the final days of Trump's first term. I'd expect that Trump will be much more interested in money than PR in the final days of his second term too. But he might not live that long, which must be excruciating if you're a wealthy crook.
Except he's not, and never has been. Quite the opposite in fact. Sure, he's made blunders out of naivety here and there just like everyone else on the planet, but he's never done or said anything overtly racist like Biden did on multiple occasions.
Virtually every American president is/was racist. If they weren't, they'd have more care and concern for the innocent lives taken by US created/backed wars/genocides.
It's important to remember that Trump was actually relatively cash poor when he ran for president.
If you get rid of all his insane statements about his own wealth, his entire fortune boils down to a skyscraper, a resort, and a handful of piddling licensing deals. His realistic net worth was probably closer to, $500 million and the annual discretionary free cash flow closer to $20 - $40 million.
So, yeah. A single $2 million dollar ... erm... "emolument" would be something like 5-10% of his annual cashflow for a year. He might have taken over a 100 of these - that's a substantial boon!
Well, he knows the price for this service - you donate 2 billion real USD to Mr. Orange private shittoken scam "fund" and you go free. He should scrounge his pockets or ask his cronies to prepare a required fee.
Unlike CZ, who made Trump and his family hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars, SBF has absolutely nothing to offer Trump. He's broke and a complete outcast.
Ross Ulbricht became a cause celebre among libertarians, but SBF was always genuinely despised by pretty much everyone.
Don't be a clown. If SBF was out of jail he could raise a twenty billion dollar fund tomorrow.
His Anthropic investment alone would give him credibility. If it hadn't been liquidated for pennies FTX would have been one of the best performing funds of all time, even with the theft and mismanagement.
This is a good point. We should just let all the ponzi schemes that are currently underway ride. Maybe they made good investments that will return 100x. The only way to know is to not intervene.
IF he was pardoned, THEN he could easily raise money, because his old fund made EXTREMELY GOOD investment decisions. That's not a moral statement, that's a factual claim. "He should get out of jail because he is a good investor" is a strawman argument I did not make.
I highly doubt investors would be flocking to give their money to a convicted fraudster. And I would be surprised if he wasn’t still banned from starting a company by the SEC.
It wasn't a Ponzi scheme. You really need to read up before commenting. It was a wildly successful fund he used as a slush fund for other projects. There's no mechanism for FTX to collapse unless Anthropic among other projects collapses to zero.
Alameda was only profitable in the years when Bitcoin was going up. By 2022 their trading operations were deeply negative (hence the decision to steal customer funds).
> Trump has pardoned a number of people who have donated large sums to his political campaigns.
It will be interesting to see how he'll be able to spin his well-documented donations to Democratic causes and sell that to the current administration:
"He personally gave at least $40 million to politicians and political action committees ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, mostly to Democrats and liberal-leaning groups, making him the second overall top donor to Democrats, only behind George Soros, according to the Center for Responsive Politics" [0].
The question is, if he would see it really as an insult. Hitler was pretty successful in the beginning and did rise to the top against many odds and breaking conventions. (unlike Trump, he was not born rich, though)
There's this notion from the Supreme Court case Burdick v. United States (1915) that accepting a pardon is an implicit admission of guilt. Therefore, a person can refuse a pardon. There isn't anything in the decision to justify the argument that accepting the pardon is an admission of guilt, it's just stated as a fact. It seems at odds with situations where pardons have been used to correct miscarriages of justice in cases of factual innocence.
Just to clarify, a pardon in the ordinary sense can't be refused. If you're imprisoned and the President pardon's you, you can't decide to refuse the pardon and remain in prison. As soon as the pardon is granted you are released, whether you like it or not, whether you "accept" it or not.
The Burdick case had to do with an individual who had not yet been convicted of anything being offered a pardon in exchange for testimony that could have otherwise incriminated him. The Supreme Court ruled that in that specific scenario someone accepting a pardon could be seen as admitting guilt, so the pardon couldn't be forced on Burdick to strip away his fifth amendment right and compel his testimony.
From what I recall last time I looked into it, sort of by current legal theory.
A pardon does not automatically require a confession (though it could be part of the terms), however blanket pardons remove the ability to plead the 5th on the topic if subpoenaed as a witness. The 5th precludes being forced to testify against yourself, but if the government has declared it not a crime then you can’t testify against yourself even if you wanted to.
From what I recall, non-global pardons still maintained some level of 5th Amendment protections. Ie you were pardoned for A, but talking about A might reveal you did B, so you could still potentially testify against yourself.
Iirc, non-global pardons usually come with a stipulation like “must testify that or about…” because of this.
No; there have been a number of (controversial) pardons for people who were either not charged or had not been convicted. Gerald Ford set something of a precedent by pardoning Richard Nixon for activities related to the Watergate cover-up, and Joe Biden pre-emptively pardoned his whole family.
These applications of the pardon power have been controversial, but never successfully challenged.
This isn't that surprising after it was reported on that he had notes about claiming to "come out as a Republican and against the woke agenda" as a PR plan to defend himself. (https://gizmodo.com/sbf-floated-coming-out-republican-tucker...) I wonder if Trump is selling pardons and whether SBF still has the means for it. It's depressing that the US's state of affairs is such that this might be a workable strategy for him.
Doesn't matter how you "apply", as long as the cash is received.
SBF has more than 20 years left.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/15/opinion/leonh...
https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-trump-racism-election-...
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/27/nx-s1-5763863/hegseth-soldier...
If you get rid of all his insane statements about his own wealth, his entire fortune boils down to a skyscraper, a resort, and a handful of piddling licensing deals. His realistic net worth was probably closer to, $500 million and the annual discretionary free cash flow closer to $20 - $40 million.
So, yeah. A single $2 million dollar ... erm... "emolument" would be something like 5-10% of his annual cashflow for a year. He might have taken over a 100 of these - that's a substantial boon!
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/23/pardon-binance-founder-cz-tr...
Ross Ulbricht became a cause celebre among libertarians, but SBF was always genuinely despised by pretty much everyone.
His Anthropic investment alone would give him credibility. If it hadn't been liquidated for pennies FTX would have been one of the best performing funds of all time, even with the theft and mismanagement.
IF he was pardoned, THEN he could easily raise money, because his old fund made EXTREMELY GOOD investment decisions. That's not a moral statement, that's a factual claim. "He should get out of jail because he is a good investor" is a strawman argument I did not make.
Ponzi schemes often have that feature. Right up until the bottom completely falls out.
And was a campaign promise Trump issued in order to secure votes from that base.
It will be interesting to see how he'll be able to spin his well-documented donations to Democratic causes and sell that to the current administration:
"He personally gave at least $40 million to politicians and political action committees ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, mostly to Democrats and liberal-leaning groups, making him the second overall top donor to Democrats, only behind George Soros, according to the Center for Responsive Politics" [0].
0: https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donatio...
The Burdick case had to do with an individual who had not yet been convicted of anything being offered a pardon in exchange for testimony that could have otherwise incriminated him. The Supreme Court ruled that in that specific scenario someone accepting a pardon could be seen as admitting guilt, so the pardon couldn't be forced on Burdick to strip away his fifth amendment right and compel his testimony.
A pardon does not automatically require a confession (though it could be part of the terms), however blanket pardons remove the ability to plead the 5th on the topic if subpoenaed as a witness. The 5th precludes being forced to testify against yourself, but if the government has declared it not a crime then you can’t testify against yourself even if you wanted to.
From what I recall, non-global pardons still maintained some level of 5th Amendment protections. Ie you were pardoned for A, but talking about A might reveal you did B, so you could still potentially testify against yourself.
Iirc, non-global pardons usually come with a stipulation like “must testify that or about…” because of this.
These applications of the pardon power have been controversial, but never successfully challenged.