Did Sam Bankman Fried Try To Pay Off Donald Trump To Skip US Election?

According to a report from The Telegraph, Sam Bankman Fried (SBF), founder and former CEO at failed crypto exchange FTX, attempted to influence presidential elections in the United States. The crypto founder has been accused of using the company’s funds to influence US politics, but new data reveals the depth of its actions.

Sam Bankman Fried Gets Involved In Presidential Race?

In an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” author Michael Lewis spoke about Sam Bankman Fried, FTX, and its collapse in late 2022. The author is renowned for writing about the 2008 sub-prime crisis in the US, which led to a worldwide economic recession, in his book “The Big Short.”

The book on Sam Bankman Fried is titled “Going Infinite,” Lewis met with the crypto founder at the peak of his fame and fortune and later when things came crashing down. During the interview, the author was asked about SBF’s intentions to “pay off” Donald Trump, former US president, to skip the 2024 election.

Lewis claimed that the crypto founder thought about offering the former US president $5 billion to avoid the electoral race. A recent poll reveals that former president Trump has the potential voters to go against sitting president Joe Biden.

Trump is the most likely candidate to represent the US Republican party in this event, as these results suggest. As many have suggested, offering him money to avoid the competition could have served the Democratic party’s political agenda.

The FTX Founder and former CEO has been linked to this political party. SBF allegedly used his clients’ funds to donate millions of dollars to the Democrats and managed to get close with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) before his company collapsed.

During the interview, Lewis said the following, suggesting that the $5 billion figure came from the former US president or a spokesperson representing Donald Trump:

The number that had been kicking around (to pay Trump) when I was speaking to Sam (Bankman Fried) was $5 billion (…). The question Sam had was not only was $5 billion enough to pay Trump, but was, “was this legal?”

Could SBF Buy A President, And Why Would He?

The author suggested that the idea of paying Donald Trump to stay off the US 2024 election was floated around by SBF and the FTX staff even after the company went into bankruptcy.

The former US president and the FTX founder have had issues with the US legal system. The former was accused of illegally inflating the value of his investment, while the latter is set to stand trial for over seven charges of fraud.

The interview with Lewis raises many questions in the financial and crypto community; many wondered why SBF still prioritized paying off Trump even after his company was in trouble. That and many other questions are likely to need to be answered.

Investor Jim Chanos addressed Lewis’s allegations, dismissing them as part of a “false narrative” that FTX and other companies used after filing for bankruptcy protection. Via his X account, Chanos said:

This was literally Enron’s defense. “If it wasn’t for those meddling short-sellers and journalists causing a run-on-the-bank, we would’ve been fine.” This is nonsense, as both FTX and Enron were both massively insolvent, not illiquid.

As of this writing, the price of Bitcoin stands at $28,300, with a 5% profit in the last 24 hours.

Cover image from Unsplash, chart from Tradingview