US President Donald Trump reportedly will not grant a pardon to Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried, who is serving a 25-year sentence for his role in the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
According to a Thursday interview with Trump by The New York Times, the president said he had no intention of pardoning Bankman-Fried and others, including music producer Sean Combs and former New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez. Bankman-Fried has been behind bars since August 2023 when a federal judge revoked his bail before his criminal trial.
In the same interview, Trump pushed back against questions regarding potential conflicts of interest with the cryptocurrency industry. The president and his family have connections to the Bitcoin mining company American Bitcoin, the platform behind the USD1 stablecoin World Liberty Financial and through his personal memecoin, Official Trump (TRUMP).
“I got a lot of votes because I backed crypto, and I got to like it,” Trump told the Times.
Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March 2024 following his conviction on seven felony counts related to his role in the misuse of customer funds at FTX. Other executives, including former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and former FTX Digital Markets co-CEO Ryan Salame, received substantially less prison time as part of plea deals with prosecutors.
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Since his conviction and sentence, reports signaled that Bankman-Fried may have attempted to seek a presidential pardon from Trump by saying he had a “good relationship” with Republicans and cozying up to right-wing figures like Tucker Carlson. Polymarket gave users only a 6% chance on bets that Trump would pardon SBF before 2027.
Trump has pardoned other figures tied to the crypto industry. In January, shortly after taking office, he issued a pardon for Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. He also made waves in October by pardoning former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who served four months and whom Trump later said he didn’t know.
SBF awaits appeal in federal court
Even without a pardon from Trump on the table, Bankman-Fried has legal recourse to have his conviction and sentence overturned.
In November, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard arguments from SBF’s lawyers about appealing the former CEO’s judgment. Although no notice had been posted to the public docket as of Thursday, the court is eventually expected to issue a decision. Should they deny SBF’s appeal, his last recourse would be to file for a review of the case with the Supreme Court.
Ellison, who was sentenced to two years in prison, is scheduled to be released on Jan. 21. Federal Bureau of Prisons records showed that, in October, she had been transferred from the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut to a Residential Reentry Management field office in New York City as part of her transition toward the end of her sentence.
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