The Senate agreed Wednesday that Sam Bankman-Fried should never receive clemency, passing a resolution stating the FTX founder should “under no circumstances” get a pardon or commutation.
It passed by unanimous consent, a procedure that clears a measure only if not a single senator objects to it.
A bipartisan effort
Senators Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, and Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, led the resolution. The pair serve as the Senate Banking Committee’s digital assets subcommittee’s top Republican and Democrat, respectively.
Lummis, the crypto industry’s most committed advocate in Congress, has spent years writing the legislation the industry wants while leading the effort to keep one of its most infamous figures behind bars.
Lummis commented when the pair introduced the measure on June 17:
“He had his day in court.”
Gallego’s statement ended with four words: “Keep him locked up.”
No pardon in sight
Bankman-Fried is not eligible for release until around 2044. A jury convicted him in November 2023 on seven counts tied to the collapse of FTX, which prosecutors called one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history, with American customers losing more than $8 billion.
President Donald Trump said in January he had no plans to pardon Bankman-Fried. He has, however, cleared Binance founder Changpeng Zhao and Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht, along with other white-collar offenders.
How FTX collapsed
Bankman-Fried ran two companies at once. FTX was a crypto exchange, while Alameda Research was a trading firm he also owned. He moved billions in FTX customer deposits to Alameda, which spent the money on trades, venture investments, and political donations.
Much of what Alameda counted as assets was FTT, a token FTX had created itself. When Binance said it would sell its FTT holdings, prices collapsed. Customers rushed to withdraw, and FTX filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11, 2022.
