"An amended indictment accused the 31-year-old former billionaire of directing two FTX executives to evade contribution limits by donating to Democrats and Republicans, and to conceal where the money came from."
"9. As noted above, SAMUEL BANKMAN-FRIED, a/k/a "SBF," the defendant, also used misappropriated customer money to help fund over $100 million in political contributions in advance of the 2022 election. At BANKMAN-FRIED's direction, and to conceal the source of the funds used for the contributions, some of the political contributions were made in the names of FTX executives, including Nishad Singh. To conceal the fact that the Alameda account containing FTX customer deposits was a source of the donations, BANKMAN-FRIED directed that money from the Alameda account be wired to these executives' personal bank accounts, and that these executives then make donations in their own names. By directing donations through Singh and another FTX executive, BANKMAN-FRIED was able to evade restrictions on certain types of political contributions, and thereby maximize FTX's political influence. He leveraged this influence, in turn, to lobby Congress and regulatory agencies to support legislation and regulation he believed would make it easier for FTX to continue to accept customer deposits and grow, which would, in turn, allow the misappropriation scheme to continue. BANKMAN-FRIED also used these connections with politicians and government officials to falsely burnish the public image of FTX as a legitimate exchange."
> “All my Republican donations were dark,” he said, referring to political donations that are not publicly disclosed in FEC filings. “The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the f—k out if you donate to Republicans. They’re all super liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.”
He claims otherwise, although that's obviously not necessarily the truth. The public donations only account for $40m, and this document says they have $100m in political donations. It'll be interesting to see what the actual numbers end up being.
> He claims otherwise, although that's obviously not necessarily the truth. The public donations only account for $40m, and this document says they have $100m in political donations. It'll be interesting to see what the actual numbers end up being.
I want to remind everyone following this thread that this is a prime example of the same chicanery and fraud you see on Wall street and that is also found within the VC circles, and not a reflection of the BTC community as a whole.
Mainly because he is an insider of the VC circle, his parents are Stanford'ites who probably used thier connections to get him VC funding from Seqouia who lauded him as a genius while he was high playing video games while on a zoom call with them!
He is from MIT and used the cult that is effective alturism to justify his scam and his disgraced ex-gf/ex-ceo of Alameda is Stanford alumni and the two were seen as the next best thing since sliced bread despite proving that they managed (and I use the term loosely) the to make Enron scam look like child's play. The interim CEO said this was the worst example of bookkeeping and overall management he had ever seen, and he worked as interim-CEO for the Enron case [0]!
Again, you people as a whole say we are scamers, when the reality the ones doing the most scams are people who HN exalts and places on a pedestal as some exhaulted member of Society, when in reality they are malicious, drug-addled, orgy having incompetents with deep connections to Ivy league and Silicon Valley venture Capital who will stop at nothing to grift in masse.
I've been in this space for nearly 12 years now, and not only have we felt the severe impact of this to our collective reputation, but I have never seen this level of incompetence. Even with Karpeles, who I think deserves some leniency after serving time in prison in Japan and having his life ruined in the process, he was just way over his head in emerging technology that had no real analog or precedence at the time: did he scam, all signs point to yes. And did things like the Willy bot makes use of ingenious ways to recover lost/stolen/hacked funds: kind of. He was clearly using horrible OPSEC, and exchange hacks back then were all too common; but FTX was an entirely different thing for reasons that vastly differ starting with socio-economics onward.
Mark was a nerd who bought a Magic the Gathering website and decided to sell bitcoin, not some prat who can't keep his mouth shut about all the crimes he committed online and continued to grift despite being on house arrest... seriously, if this doesn't change your collective attitudes about 'who is the real scammer/grifter' in this space you are beyond anyone's help as your level of cognitive dissonance has no solution.
This is a prime example that we are speed running the gilded age, this imbecile should have all his and his parents assets seized for being inept, and thrown in prison with no parole for at least 25 years. If only to set a precedent that this type of shit needs to stop already; it's why many of us have lost any trust in these institutions in the first place that made cryptocurrencies necessary to begin with: note what Satoshi wrote in the genesis block.
I called it in the Summer of '21 that these idiots were going to prison, there was no way you can be this blatantly stupid and reckless (regardless of who your parents were) for too long. I personally thought that once they started bribing politicians it was likely they would be lost in a flight from the Bahamas and end up in some black site rendition camp if he kept it up and this all became public knowledge, instead the US justice system continued to do what it does best: protect it's own.
And he was on house arrest awaiting trial and kept scamming [1]!
This is who Silicon Valley, Ivy League lauds as it's next Titan of Industry [2].
> when we see that's its scam after scam all the way down, excuse us for having a dim view of those who are all about the fundamentals.
I hate to be 'that guy' but usename checks out:
Philistine (adjective) - Lacking in appreciation for art or culture.
The same was said about the Internet in the 90s, its a fad underscored with seediness and scams abound, I have no use for it and no one will use it. That was essentially Krugman's position on the internet and lo and behold it was the same about Bitcoin [0].
Again, I don't deny 99% of alts are scams, they are. But what you fail to see in erroneously painting these broad strokes is the same thing that boomers and 'economists' like Krugman did and lose the scrip entirely in the process--or was a mouth-piece for vested interests in the fiat monetary system that helped him become a Nobel Laureate and professor of economics at Columbia.
In a call he had with Tiffany Fong that she recorded, he talked about how he donated equally to both of them and that he couldn't care less about the politics, but he hid the republican ones considerably better because he felt the media companies would have hung him out to dry for the republican ones.
I can't remember exactly what video it's in, but I very distinctly remember him talking about it.
I believe him because 1. He directed the donations and 2. He has been unable to stop himself from talking/confessing from the very beginning.
If his intentions was to shepherd favorable laws, why wouldn't he have donated to Republicans? If you disagree with the feds and don't think that influencing lawmakers was his motive, then I'd appreciate your take on what his motivation could have been.
Why wouldn't you believe he is a shallow, privileged, self-important person who cares a lot about how he is perceived, and whose thinking turns out not be all that sophisticated? There is less to him than meets the eye, to quote Tallulah Bankhead.
I haven’t reviewed the current version of the indictment in detail, but the earlier version (before the campaign finance charges were removed because of the extradition -related bar, and then inserted in different form as part of the other frauds rather than separate charges) had identified and charged specific distinct chains through which both Republican-affiliated and farhter-left-Democratic donations than SBF’s cultivated centrist Democratic image were channeled, its not just SBFs word on this strategy.
Salame's $24M in donations to Republican causes are on the public record. The government alleges they were directed by SBF, which they'll have to prove, but it's certainly evidence.
IIRC he had ~20% of the vote in fervent supporters in 2020. 40% of the Republican vote is phenomenal but not a majority.
So a majority of Republicans were not "Trump or nothing" they just voted for their political appointee. (Doesn't mean they weren't happy with him, just that they would have been okay with someone else)
I agree that society should be structured more like it was in the post-war era - to the end of a better distribution of wealth, but there are always going to be powerful actors with interests contrary to yours, whoever you are, whatever you believe, whether that power is through business, religion, unions, wealth, or international relations. Solving the issue of billionaires cuts off one head, but it doesn't fix human weakness to influence
Soros gets demonised by the right because he’s Jewish, but he’s still no friend of the working class and has no interest in actual democracy. Like most capitalists, he funds people and systems that benefit the profits of his faction of capital.
I thinking funding the Central European University in Budapest originally with full scholarships to poorer Hungarian students is in the spirit of democracy and helps working class people.
Could you highlight what part of his philanthropy you disagree with?
This is an incredibly disingenuous post. Soros called 1944 the happiest year of his life because he witnessed his father's bravery in saving other Jews.
Soros’s fellow Hungarian Jew Imre Kertész, survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, said that he sometimes looked back on the death camps and recalled the moments of happiness he experienced there. It’s [spoiler warning] the climactic moment of his most acclaimed book. For Jews, living through the Holocaust brought some paradoxical emotions, which ultimately serve as proof that the human spirit is indomitable even in the darkest times.
It's sad and interesting. I once sat next to an old man on a bus in Boston (summer 1996) who had the serial number tattoo on his wrist, and since he was about the age of my own dad, asked him about it. He was thankful that I asked, i think something about people are afraid to ask how he is, or similar. he told me he had survived a camp (which one i forget) and had lost his family, and that he realizes it was not Germans in general but the crazy criminals in power, but he was forever wary of anything that reminded him of it. Very kind avuncular conversation.
>Congress' FTX Problem: 1 in 3 Members Got Cash From Crypto Exchange's Bosses
The session began with 196 U.S. lawmakers who took direct contributions from Sam Bankman-Fried and other former FTX executives, and many of them are still trying to get rid of it.
In a just and fair world, the lawmakers elected by corrupt crypto-barons' misappropriation would be chastened. Unfortunately, we don't seem to live in that world.
I think a particularly interesting part of this filing is that SBF intended to influence both Republicans and Democrats equally - all he cared about was weeding out "anti-crypto" politicians, he just funneled the money to the Dems through himself and Singh, and funneled the money through the Republicans through Salame.
Well, that $100m didn't go towards obtaining immunity, it was contributed to campaign funds for the purpose of lobbying. He wanted legislation favorable to FTX.
You can bribe a corrupt official or politician for a short period. However, unless you can blackmail or continue supporting them, they won't continue to stay bribed. Once FTX went bankrupt they lost their limited immunity to political consequences. They were too clumsy to engage in the sophisticated schemes used by other lobbyists and PACs to ensure that politicians stay "bribed."
If you want to see how a criminal organization can truly become legitimized through corruption of political structures, Uber is a great example. They managed to create a decentralized illegal Taxi company in the most public manner possible.
So does only the donator get punished here and not as well the recipient? Isn't it generally the case if you receive stolen goods they can be take away?
I think there should be an exception specificity for political donations where the recipient is just as much in trouble for an illegal donation as the party sending it.
with regards to the second half of your comment, I suspect this is a belief coloured by your distaste for the political system in general. This is understandable, but not really fair
Yes the political donation system is horrendous, and yes both parties are as a result corrupt capitalist lapdogs to corporations and the super rich, but given that the system exists, it's hard to legally blame a party for taking a donation from what at the time seemed like a legitimate business(man).
I agree that there could and should be some form of financial retribution though. If a charity received illegal donations, surely they would have to forfeit it?
I agree that you should not be responsible when the donation is done legally but it appears not only did SBF use stolen funds but also paid illegal donations
Assuming we cannot prove these parties knew the funds were stolen, wouldn’t you be punishing them for something they could not have known was illegal? We may assume that individuals in these parties knew that these donations were not entirely legal (due to the splitting) but can we prove that?
Sure, in the case of parties, they’d be fine, they can pay that kind of money back, but let’s assume you donate to a charity and that charity spends that money on humanitarian aid. Your stolen 100m are now a (pretty nice, big) school in some country far away. Would it be „the right thing“ to make the charity pay that money back? Is that what the law demands? I guess that would make it even harder to run such a thing, since you always have to plan for the case where you might have to pay back donations you received… how long ago?
But then again, political parties and campaigns may need different treatment. And you also somehow want to recover these funds for the people originally owned that money. Rough call to make.
in my experience being good at maths doesn't reliably indicate you're good at anything wildly beyond maths. often some related subjects like programming, but not always
This can be said about anything. It also appears that they were good specifically at competitive math problem solving. Which one can say even more narrow area of math. Nevertheless, it does correlate with general intelligence and they were a able sell a snake oil to a bunch of investors, so some level of competence they did poses. However, just taking customers’ moneys directly and wiring it straight to execs’ bank accounts is just… too simplistic. Good old donation to a little soccer league where a politician’s spouse sits on the board has more logistics to it.
> is there any evidence they're actually good at math?
Both went to MIT and Stanford respectively, then went on to be professional traders (Jane Street Capital); now, one wouldn't think that was all because of who their parents were, right? As in this only possible because of their own merit to be sure. That is how this system works, after all!
Honestly, I went to private school, and these idiots reminded me of the children of the affluent who were so irredeemably stupid that their parents will stop at nothing to hide their shame and just pay to have them have some role in a freinds company just to offload them.
There is an interview of her saying on record that she doesn't use or need anything she learned in her math degree to do what she does and man... did that come back to bite her in the ass!
She received some honors from math competitions. And he was in math camps and such. Both have degrees either in math or physics. So yeah, they are above average for sure.
>"9. As noted above, SAMUEL BANKMAN-FRIED, a/k/a "SBF," the defendant, also used misappropriated customer money to help fund over $100 million in political contributions "
Didn't he already have some very prominent 1st amendment lawyer writing legal briefs about how not letting him intimidate witnesses was a big 1st amendment issue?
Sure, his money spends, maybe the guy would have done it for anyone who paid enough, but I suspect all these prior donations helped grease the wheel for that kind of thing, a lot.
The article says he donated to DNC and to GOP (through Salame) to eradicate anti-crypto sentiment among lawmakers. Not so sure about the desire to create a socialist pet.
> An amended indictment accused the 31-year-old former billionaire of directing two FTX executives to evade contribution limits by donating to Democrats and Republicans, and to conceal where the money came from.
> Bankman-Fried's indictment does not name the two people prosecutors say he used for "straw donors" to donate money at his direction. But other court papers and Federal Elections Commission data show they are Nishad Singh and Ryan Salame.
> Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX's Bahamian unit, gave more than $24 million to Republican candidates and causes in the 2022 election cycle, according to Federal Election Commision data.
This is all right there in the article. FTX had their fingers solidly in both pies.
Why are these numbers so different from the original FEC complaint? [0]
> Consequently, based on available data, Mr. Bankman-Fried is the disclosed
source of approximately $37,768,312 in contributions to Democratic candidates, parties, and aligned outside organizations in the 2022 cycle. In contrast, Mr. Bankman-Fried is the disclosed source of approximately $320,400 in contributions to Republican candidates, parties, and aligned outside organizations in the 2022 cycle.
And lest you think these are your typical MAGA republicans receiving the money, they are all the most RINO, uniparty republicans you can imagine [1]:
> Since July, Bankman-Fried has made $5,800 contributions, the maximum individuals can give directly to Congressional campaigns, to the committees of Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Richard Burr
> Why are these numbers so different from the original FEC complaint?
Because CREW is a non-governmental organization, and as such, can't get things like a search warrant. They've no more power than you or I to dig into his internal communications and finances. Their complaint is based on publicly available information prior to SBF's arrest.
Anyone can file a FEC complaint. I can file one against you claiming you donated $500M to the lizard people controlling Queen Elizabeth II's reanimated corpse. It has no evidentiary value.
The government claims they have seized evidence that he secretly was directing tens of millions of dollars to Republican causes via Salame as a straw donor.
The guy you're replying to took the data as he saw it, formed a hypothesis that matched the data, and the hypothesis makes a prediction which can be validated. Is it an unlikely/weak hypothesis? Sure. But you're asking him to just throw away thought/science, to not try to explain the world.
you're describing what all conspiracy theorists claim to do
if the unvalidated, hole-filled hypothesis (which DOESN'T, in fact, match the data) can indeed be validated, then validate it and report the process and results of validation
short of that, the unvalidated, hole-filled hypothesis which doesn't match the data, seems unlikely, given the millions of donations to republicans
What data did he take? Be precise and especial give attention to the leaps from “SBF is being prosecuted” to “SBF is being setup for assassination”. The only facts are what we already knew: he’s being prosecuted and that after repeatedly violating the terms of a legal agreement he’s getting the consequences he agreed to. That leaves the most likely explanation that the most anodyne explanation is true: an entitled rich man called the judge’s bluff and is learning that federal judges don’t appreciate that.
Everything else is a flight of fancy with no support other than people steeped in right-wing propaganda would really like them to be true. There’s no reason to believe he knows anything damaging to the DNC, that such hypothetical evidence could only come out from his testimony, that it would be worth murder to keep quiet, or that it would be easiest to kill him in prison. Someone dying in government custody would draw a lot of attention – he’s going to Club Fed with other white collar criminals, not the problem wing at a super max facility, and other embezzlers tend not to shank people since they do expect to get out early for good behavior.
If you were a screenwriter, the movie version would have our hypothetical government conspiracy keeping him out of jail so he could more easily be assassinated at home with evidence planted to make it look like someone who lost their fortune with FTX because his parent’s house is a much softer target and there are thousands of people with that motive and none of them are feds. Once you’re just making things up you can easily come up with a chain of make-believe supporting any side imaginable.
Funny how because these are "donation" and "lobbying" but not "bribe" there is no consequence for the receiving party and also no recuperation of the money.
It's quite common for politicians to return money that is stolen/foreign/otherwise when they find out.
Sometimes because the law requires it, but also if they don't, the attack ad for their opponent writes itself.
Although obviously it depends on how much time has passed and whether the money should already be considered "spent". Because even if the politician wants to repay it, new donors want their money going to re-election activities, not going to repay FTX. After a period of time, you might as well be asking the television stations to return the money they received for running the campaign ads, which... isn't gonna happen.
> but also if they don't, the attack ad for their opponent writes itself.
Does this even matter anymore? Seems like people are so tribal that they'll vote for their party no matter what, combined with lots of voter apathy makes it seem like it doesn't matter.
Does this even matter anymore? Seems like people are so tribal that they'll vote for their party no matter what, combined with lots of voter apathy makes it seem like it doesn't matter.
If that was true, there would be no such thing as swing states.
> Because even if the politician wants to repay it, new donors want their money going to re-election activities, not going to repay FTX. After a period of time, you might as well be asking the television stations to return the money they received for running the campaign ads, which... isn't gonna happen.
Politicians should be made to pay out of their own pockets or have an insurance for this type of situation.
> Politicians should be made to pay out of their own pockets
We don't want to create a system where only the rich can afford to be politicians ... or at least we don't want to make that any worse than it already is
Easy to say it now but there was a period there when FTX was a reputable company.
But I would be all for labelling the entire crypto industry as illegal and ensuring any donations are immediately returned. Maybe just to be safe we should add anything AI related to the list as well.
> Politicians should be made to pay out of their own pockets or have an insurance for this type of situation.
Why stop at politicians, though? Shouldn't everyone who accepts large sums of money be held accountable if it turns out the money was stolen? At least to some degree?
I think it depends on what we mean by 'held accountable.' If it means, make best effort to return the money sure. If it means more than that, probably not. If someone robbed a bank, evaded the police and donated all that money to the Salvation Army in the next county, the Salvation Army has no way of knowing the money was stolen. So the only fair thing to expect the Salvation Army to do in this situation is, make a best effort to return what they can.
Does this include line employees who worked at Google or Facebook or Microsoft if the company is found liable for doing something sketchy?
The sums sure are substantial. You can argue they know their employer was no angel, too. OK to claw back paychecks, or do we draw the line somewhere closer to actually participating in a criminal act?
As a straightforward instance that arises periodically, if a bank were to erroneously deposit funds into your account you’re under obligation to return the funds.
Accepting illegitimate funds without awareness doesn't appear to be a criminal offense, based on my understanding (short of falling afoul of money laundering). The punishment typically just involves returning the funds.
Unless there's compelling evidence to definitively demonstrate their awareness of the funds' misappropriated source, it seems challenging to establish grounds for substantial punitive action in this situation.
> you might as well be asking the television stations to return the money they received for running the campaign ads, which... isn't gonna happen.
The PACs should have to return it and if they can't they're declared bankrupt and everyone associated with running them should be barred for 10 years from involvement in political donations in all forms.
Why are PACs lawless relative to the rest of us, do you think?
I suspect there will be pressure to return the money, particularly if it was through straw donors, lest anyone be associated with taking dirty, dirty money from a criminal.
100M isn't that much money for political campaigns in 2023.
Stupid question: Doesn't a (social or legal) norm to return money donated by crooks make politicians more willing to sweep their donors' misdeeds under the rug (and push judges to do the same), in order to avoid having to justify themselves?
Possibly, but the risk appears substantial for a relatively modest payoff.
If their guilt is glaringly apparent and your stance is interpreted as supportive, the blowback could be even more detrimental compared to promptly creating distance and professing unawareness of their wrongdoing, genuine or not.
The level of risk seems considerably high for an amount of money that, in the realm of campaign contributions, isn't substantial.
Worse, if the money is dirty, it might give prosecutors a reason to start investigating your campaign. Many federal prosecutors are more than eager to make their name in the Justice Department by taking down a prominent public figure.
> Have you been to a country that has actual corruption?
Absolutely, I lived in E. Europe for a significant amount of time; and I almost respect them more for making it as obvious as they do. At least there isn't an air of goaded legitimacy, and everyone knows that if you just pay the bribe you can just go and live your life on as normal. Whereas in the US you are pressured to pretend it's not all that, and that questioning such a system makes you a heretic of the best system ever devised.
Seriously, it's pathetic and I just don't have the patience anymore; this is exactly what happens when Corps, Banks and Wall Street lobby to create legislation that favors them.
The biggest failure of populists is to convince themselves that lobbying is bribery. Lobbying played a significant role in environmental regulation and civil rights. However, now that lobbying has become taboo among grass roots movements, creating a power vacuum that corporate lobbyists are happy to fill.
I don't know how it works, but bankruptcy law seems a little different? Maybe the company's new management (in bankruptcy) will try to get it back? How far back can a bankruptcy court go with clawbacks?
Called a right in the US, but when it happens somewhere else, particularly in developing nations, it's called bribery and the govt and politicians called corrupt.
You give someone with political power money in order to buy their support and/or influence the way they spend government money/efforts. That's what bribery is. That's what lobbying is.
> John Stewart advocating for 9/11 first responders or you calling your Senator to tell them to support or oppose a bill would then be called what?
That's lobbying.
Jon Stewart supporting politician X with $1M for his re-election campaign in exchange for a 9/11 bill... that would be bribery. But in the US, this bribery is called lobbying.
The donations have been a central part of the story since day one.
Are you suggesting that They made him leak a witness’s diary so they could arrest him for witness tampering?
Sad to see this conspiracy stuff leaking into HN. Unfortunately I need to make fun of this wildly misinformed cruft to help prevent it taking root here.
I'm pretty confident the bribe money was under scrutiny the entire time (see campaign finance charges), and his bail was revoked for unrelated reasons.
The implication you're making is that the result is essentially unknowable and also implies your opinion on this is spurious: We might as well equally assume the judge is biased against legislators and is eager to claw back the donations.
The way the judge’s biases lie and how they might affect their decisions is essentially a random unknowable variable, unless you have good information on this particular judge to support your claim.
"Most" have "pledged"...that does not give me as much comfort as it gives you.
> Some have already done so.
To who? Do those politicians perhaps have relationships with the orgs they donate to?
I wouldn't trust a politician as far as I can throw one. Especially in this case where they could have easily returned the money to the bankruptcy trustee.
Like if someone defrauded you and gave the money to politicians and the politicians gave the money to charities they were affiliated with instead of returning it to you I'm sure you'd be happy with that.
Put yourself in the shoes of an FTX victim. Would it give you any comfort knowing that your investment was donated to a politician's local charity so they could score political points, instead of going back to you?
It's not their money to donate, stolen proceeds belong to the victims. They should've given it back to FTX.
Additionally, money is fungible, so the politicians can't claim the money is "gone" after being donated, since presumably they're not bankrupt and have other money FTX can claw back.
How easy is it to clawback money donated to a politician through a 3rd party? I am not a lawyer and don't live in the US, but I imagine that being super difficult and lengthy as a process.
Yeah, I imagine it would involve a lawsuit, so not trivial if the politician is willing to fight.
Though I'm not sure if most of the straw donors are 3rd parties, since the ones I knew about were officers of the company.
Either way, I feel that the moral action is clear, but some politicians want to still use the ill-gotten gains for their political purposes while claiming to act morally. An act which is unfortunately fooling some people.
There's been a flood of temp accounts posting political comments today. This one is 8 minutes old at time of posting.
There were 3 or 4 accounts earlier today posting about Assange and "anti-Russian Nazi propaganda" and defending the imprisonment of Navalny, most of which were either created in the past 24 hours or have posted exclusively about those topics since their creation.
> Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) does not think much of the appointment of U.S. Attorney David Weiss as special counsel for the Justice Department’s investigation into Hunter Biden, the president’s son.
> Attorney General Merrick Garland “knows Weiss will protect Hunter,” Blackburn scoffed in a social media post on Saturday.
> But Weiss’ appointment is exactly what she and other congressional Republicans requested. Special counsel is the same designation Garland gave Jack Smith, currently prosecuting former President Donald Trump.
> Last September, a group of 31 Senate Republicans, including Blackburn, asked specifically for Weiss to be appointed to oversee the probe to “provide additional assurances to the American people that the Hunter Biden investigation is free from political influence.” Weiss had already led the investigation into his business dealings, which began under President Donald Trump.
The parent poster referenced David Weiss, the newly appointed special counsel in the Hunter Biden case, implying that SBF needs him to give a sweetheart deal of some kind ("pre trial diversion", "immunize... from other charges").
Here is the amended indictment.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.59...
"9. As noted above, SAMUEL BANKMAN-FRIED, a/k/a "SBF," the defendant, also used misappropriated customer money to help fund over $100 million in political contributions in advance of the 2022 election. At BANKMAN-FRIED's direction, and to conceal the source of the funds used for the contributions, some of the political contributions were made in the names of FTX executives, including Nishad Singh. To conceal the fact that the Alameda account containing FTX customer deposits was a source of the donations, BANKMAN-FRIED directed that money from the Alameda account be wired to these executives' personal bank accounts, and that these executives then make donations in their own names. By directing donations through Singh and another FTX executive, BANKMAN-FRIED was able to evade restrictions on certain types of political contributions, and thereby maximize FTX's political influence. He leveraged this influence, in turn, to lobby Congress and regulatory agencies to support legislation and regulation he believed would make it easier for FTX to continue to accept customer deposits and grow, which would, in turn, allow the misappropriation scheme to continue. BANKMAN-FRIED also used these connections with politicians and government officials to falsely burnish the public image of FTX as a legitimate exchange."