Sam Bankman-Fried Says He ‘Absolutely’ Wants a Pardon From Donald Trump

Imprisoned crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried told FOX Business correspondent Susan Li that he “absolutely” wants a pardon from President Donald Trump. 

Bankman-Fried, currently serving 25 years in prison on charges relating to billions in fraud, spoke to Li over the phone on Wednesday from inside a federal prison. Li asked Bankman-Fried directly if he wanted a pardon from the White House.

“Absolutely,” he said. “It would be obviously, you know, ultimately up to the president, not up to me.”

He also told Li that he had not reached out to the White House himself.

Bankman-Fried’s mother, Barbara Fried, pleaded with Trump to free her son on CNN in March, likening the two men as victims of “out of control persecution.”

“I think that Sam was the victim of an out of control prosecution, and I know that Trump himself feels he was,” she said. “I would say also that Sam is of the most brilliant, talented young men of his generation and the amount of good he can do in this world if he is free to live a life of — the life he wants he wants would be an enormous benefit to the economy, to a lot of things Trump cares about in this world, and that he ought to regard Sam as a huge asset going forward for the country.”

When Li asked Bankman-Fried if his parents or anyone else had made direct contact with the White House, he gave a vague response.

“I can’t speak for them,” said Bankman-Fried.

Li noted in her on-air report that Fox Business did find a pardon application for Bankman-Fried, though the application specifies he would first serve out his prison sentence.

The FTX founder was convicted of defrauding investors out of $8 billion after the cryptocurrency company collapsed in 2022. Bankman-Fried has continuously maintained that his prosecution was unfair, repeating his claim to Li in their interview.

“I didn’t steal user funds either,” he told Li. “Customers have been repaid now 170% or so on their deposits. It’s one of the very few cases where the platform was over-collateralized, where customers were more than made whole. And yet there was, you know, not just a criminal investigation, but a prosecution. And, you know, dozens of years of sentence[s].”

Bankman-Fried is currently appealing his conviction.

Watch above via Fox Business.

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