Sam Bankman-Fried Charged With Conspiring to Make More Than 300 Illegal Political Donations

Why Sam Bankman-Fried made all those illegal campaign donations, per DOJ's superseding indictment today. (He gave $5 million to a pro-Biden PAC, and subsequently visited the White House four times) pic.twitter.com/xTALorHQiI

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) February 23, 2023

This section is about SBF using FTX exec Nishad Singh to donate to left-leaning groups. A consultant who worked with SBF told Singh he'd have to donate to a bunch of "woke shit." This $1 million contribution was to the LGBTQ Victory Fund pic.twitter.com/AvH5neVhws

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) February 23, 2023

Prosecutors said Bankman-Fried conspired with two other former FTX executives to donate tens of millions of dollars in order to influence lawmakers to pass legislation favorable to the company.

The donations were unlawful because they were made through "straw" donors or with corporate funds, often allowing Bankman-Fried to evade contribution limits, prosecutors said.

While Bankman-Fried was one of the largest donors to Democratic campaigns in the 2022 midterms, the indictment said he "did not want to be known as a left-leaning partisan, or to have his name publicly attached to Republican candidates."

Prosecutors said that Bankman-Fried directed one executive to donate primarily to left-leaning candidates and organizations and the other to Republicans, with many donations funded by his Alameda Research hedge fund and including FTX customer funds.

The indictment said a political consultant working for Bankman-Fried told one of the executives, identified as CC-1, that "you being the center left face of our spending will mean you giving to a lot of woke shit for transactional purposes."