Sam Bankman-Fried skates on campaign finance charges
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Monica Showalter
In the mother of all convenient coincidences, cryptocurrency magnate and accused fraudster, Sam Bankman-Fried, has had all of his campaign finance charges dropped by the Department of Justice, based on a technicality that they attributed to the Bahamas government.
According to ZeroHedge :
Federal prosecutors have dropped the campaign finance violation charge against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried , after The Bahamas told the United States that it never planned to extradite SBF on campaign finance violations - which the DOJ now says would violate 'its treaty obligations to The Bahamas.' “The Government has been informed that The Bahamas notified the United States earlier today that The Bahamas did not intend to extradite the defendant on the campaign contributions count,” US Attorney Damian Williams wrote in a Wednesday night letter filing to drop the charge. “ Accordingly, in keeping with its treaty obligations to The Bahamas, the Government does not intend to proceed to trial on the campaign contributions count .”
Which is highly questionable, given that domestic politics should be of no concern to the Bahamas, but is mighty convenient for the Democrats who got all those political donations. Those recipients of all that purloined cash now won't need to answer any questions now about what they took and what they gave in return.
And it's not a small matter. Sam Bankman-Fried is the second-largest of all Democrat donors.
According to the Associated Press, the original indictment did charge him with stealing money from his cryptocurrency customers and then donating some of it (which was no small amount) to Democrats to keep the feds off his back :
if (publir_show_ads) { var opxsOASPB = document.createElement("script"); opxsOASPB.type = "text/javascript"; opxsOASPB.async = true; opxsOASPB.src = "//adserver.publir.com/www/delivery/asyncjs.php"; var opxsTargetOASPB = document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0]; opxsTargetOASPB.insertBefore(opxsOASPB, opxsTargetOASPB.firstChild); } The charge, which carries a potential for up to five years in prison after a conviction, pertained to the government’s claim that Bankman-Fried enabled over $100 million siphoned from Alameda Research to fund over 300 political contributions that were unlawful because they were made in the name of straw donors or came from corporate funds. In an indictment, prosecutors said Bankman-Fried made the contributions to improve his personal standing in Washington, D.C., to increase FTX’s profile and to “curry favor with candidates” who might help pass legislation favorable to FTX, including legislation concerning regulatory oversight over FTX and its industry.
In other words, he helped himself to more than $100 million of his customers' stored cash placed there for safekeeping in just the 2022 election cycle, and divvied it up among 300 political donations , almost all of which went to Democrats -- such as this bunch:
BREAKING: Campaign finance charges on Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX have been dropped. This is unusual. He gave millions to politicians. And there wasn't a list of who which politicians and groups he gave money to. Until now. See it here: https://t.co/uK8CTsLugJ pic.twitter.com/SJwK7roMxm — unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 27, 2023
...and, suddenly, he found those particular criminal charges, among a lot of charges he's facing, dropped.
That's pretty much the meat of the matter -- that he stole freely from his customers from the regulatory safety of the Bahamas, and paid Democrats to protect him. With that charge dropped, how very convenient for Democrats who got the money.
Some of those Dems are major bigfoot Democrats -- I see Joe Biden and Debbie Stabenow on that list above, Kristen Gillibrand, Hakeem Jeffries, Cory Booker, Patty Murray, Pete Aguilar, Maggie Hassan, Ruben Gallego -- with many of these Democrats getting the bigger-sized donations of the lot. I also see a lot of hard-to-track money going to Democrat state party organizations -- seems his money was all over, with nobody saying what it paid for. And what's with the donation to the Georgia Federal Election Committee? Bankman-Fried had a big interest in that. Whyever so? Maybe that cash is why they are so keen on harassing President Trump and have the money to do it. Is that what's paying for that activity?
Merrick Garland sure has a lot of convenient donors in that bunch, who suddenly don't have to answer questions about them.
In light of Garland's other maneuvers -- from excusing Hunter Biden from any serious corruption or gun charges, and from the incredible just-in-time-for-elections prosecutions directed at President Trump, dropping these charges has the look of a pattern -- that of a protection racket for Democrats. Protect Democrats at all costs from obvious conflicts of interest and dirty money charges, and carry on with a focus on attacking President Trump, who leads in the polls, and all is fine.
It's insane what ends they are going to protect Democrats. And as Dinesh d'Souza has noted, it's also two-tier justice, given that d'Souza got the book thrown at him for a piddly campaign finance violation of his own:
I guess his offenses were not quite as serious as mine, at least from the perspective of the Biden DOJ. You see, SBF didn’t make a movie excoriating Obama. Nor is he a conservative Republican. Now do you understand how I got 8 months on this count and he gets nothing? https://t.co/xhs8DPmulU — Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) July 27, 2023
The campaign finance issue was by far the most important issue in this case and the least-worthy aspect of it to be dropped.
Sure, the Bidenites can say that they will get Bankman-Fried on other matters, and can send him to prison for decades for it, so what is the point?
And sure, they can claim treaty obligations as their excuse, but several aspects of that are a little suspect. One is that the Bahamas spelled out in minute detail what they were extraditing Bankman-Fried for, which is not normally done. The other thing is that the DoJ would have had to have known about it when they accepted those terms, which would be what they would have wanted all along as a partisan outfit.
Third, it's a pretty thin reed. They are saying that the Bahamas really cared about this stuff enough to leave the campaign finance violations off, and would not have extradited Bankman-Fried had that been a term of extradition? They would have kept this accused criminal safe and sound and ruined their nation's reputation as a place with the rule of law so that he could continue to live in luxury in their country? That's a little questionable. More likely, they had a few things they wanted from Democrats, too, so getting these charges dropped now means that those Democrats involved now owe them a favor. Nations have interests, and a small country like the Bahamas uses whatever leverage it may have. What's more, the Bahamas has a multi-billion dollar tourist economy highly dependent on the U.S. Merrick Garland couldn't ask them for a favor? It's obvious he didn't want to, or perhaps more likely, did ask that they keep those extradition conditions as they wrote them.
Wonder why.
All in all, it's yet another travesty of justice. Dinesh D'Souza gets jail time for a minor campaign finance violation, and Sam Bankman-Friedman skates on far bigger manifestations of that charge. Democrats, meanwhile, have dodged a bullet about their campaign donors and how they reward them. And worst of all, President Trump gets the full frontal attack from the DOJ as the 'real' criminal here.
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Image: MIT Bitcoin Club, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0
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« Maureen Dowd can't seem to figure out who the liar-in-chief is. USAToday beats the global warming war drums » Tweet. |. Print. |. Email. Monica Showalter. In the mother of all convenient coincidences, cryptocurrency magnate and accused fraudster, Sam Bankman-Fried, has had all of his campaign finance charges dropped by the Department of Justice, based on a technicality that they attributed to the Bahamas government. According to ZeroHedge : Federal prosecutors have dropped the campaign finance violation charge against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried , after The Bahamas told the United States that it never planned to extradite SBF on campaign finance violations - which the DOJ now says would violate 'its treaty obligations to The Bahamas.' “The Government has been informed that The Bahamas notified the United States earlier today that The Bahamas did not intend to extradite the defendant on the campaign contributions count,” US Attorney Damian Williams wrote in a Wednesday night letter filing to drop the charge. “ Accordingly, in keeping with its treaty obligations to The Bahamas, the Government does not intend to proceed to trial on the campaign contributions count .” Which is highly questionable, given that domestic politics should be of no concern to the Bahamas, but is mighty convenient for the Democrats who got all those political donations. Those recipients of all that purloined cash now won't need to answer any questions now about what they took and what they gave in return. And it's not a small matter. Sam Bankman-Fried is the second-largest of all Democrat donors. According to the Associated Press, the original indictment did charge him with stealing money from his cryptocurrency customers and then donating some of it (which was no small amount) to Democrats to keep the feds off his back : if (publir_show_ads) { var opxsOASPB = document.createElement("script"); opxsOASPB.type = "text/javascript"; opxsOASPB.async = true; opxsOASPB.src = "//adserver.publir.com/www/delivery/asyncjs.php"; var opxsTargetOASPB = document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0]; opxsTargetOASPB.insertBefore(opxsOASPB, opxsTargetOASPB.firstChild); } The charge, which carries a potential for up to five years in prison after a conviction, pertained to the government’s claim that Bankman-Fried enabled over $100 million siphoned from Alameda Research to fund over 300 political contributions that were unlawful because they were made in the name of straw donors or came from corporate funds. In an indictment, prosecutors said Bankman-Fried made the contributions to improve his personal standing in Washington, D.C., to increase FTX’s profile and to “curry favor with candidates” who might help pass legislation favorable to FTX, including legislation concerning regulatory oversight over FTX and its industry. In other words, he helped himself to more than $100 million of his customers' stored cash placed there for safekeeping in just the 2022 election cycle, and divvied it up among 300 political donations , almost all of which went to Democrats -- such as this bunch: BREAKING: Campaign finance charges on Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX have been dropped. This is unusual. He gave millions to politicians. And there wasn't a list of who which politicians and groups he gave money to. Until now. See it here: https://t.co/uK8CTsLugJ pic.twitter.com/SJwK7roMxm — unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 27, 2023. ...and, suddenly, he found those particular criminal charges, among a lot of charges he's facing, dropped. That's pretty much the meat of the matter -- that he stole freely from his customers from the regulatory safety of the Bahamas, and paid Democrats to protect him. With that charge dropped, how very convenient for Democrats who got the money. Some of those Dems are major bigfoot Democrats -- I see Joe Biden and Debbie Stabenow on that list above, Kristen Gillibrand, Hakeem Jeffries, Cory Booker, Patty Murray, Pete Aguilar, Maggie Hassan, Ruben Gallego -- with many of these Democrats getting the bigger-sized donations of the lot. I also see a lot of hard-to-track money going to Democrat state party organizations -- seems his money was all over, with nobody saying what it paid for. And what's with the donation to the Georgia Federal Election Committee? Bankman-Fried had a big interest in that. Whyever so? Maybe that cash is why they are so keen on harassing President Trump and have the money to do it. Is that what's paying for that activity? Merrick Garland sure has a lot of convenient donors in that bunch, who suddenly don't have to answer questions about them. In light of Garland's other maneuvers -- from excusing Hunter Biden from any serious corruption or gun charges, and from the incredible just-in-time-for-elections prosecutions directed at President Trump, dropping these charges has the look of a pattern -- that of a protection racket for Democrats. Protect Democrats at all costs from obvious conflicts of interest and dirty money charges, and carry on with a focus on attacking President Trump, who leads in the polls, and all is fine. It's insane what ends they are going to protect Democrats. And as Dinesh d'Souza has noted, it's also two-tier justice, given that d'Souza got the book thrown at him for a piddly campaign finance violation of his own: I guess his offenses were not quite as serious as mine, at least from the perspective of the Biden DOJ. You see, SBF didn’t make a movie excoriating Obama. Nor is he a conservative Republican. Now do you understand how I got 8 months on this count and he gets nothing? https://t.co/xhs8DPmulU — Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) July 27, 2023. The campaign finance issue was by far the most important issue in this case and the least-worthy aspect of it to be dropped. Sure, the Bidenites can say that they will get Bankman-Fried on other matters, and can send him to prison for decades for it, so what is the point? And sure, they can claim treaty obligations as their excuse, but several aspects of that are a little suspect. One is that the Bahamas spelled out in minute detail what they were extraditing Bankman-Fried for, which is not normally done. The other thing is that the DoJ would have had to have known about it when they accepted those terms, which would be what they would have wanted all along as a partisan outfit. Third, it's a pretty thin reed. They are saying that the Bahamas really cared about this stuff enough to leave the campaign finance violations off, and would not have extradited Bankman-Fried had that been a term of extradition? They would have kept this accused criminal safe and sound and ruined their nation's reputation as a place with the rule of law so that he could continue to live in luxury in their country? That's a little questionable. More likely, they had a few things they wanted from Democrats, too, so getting these charges dropped now means that those Democrats involved now owe them a favor. Nations have interests, and a small country like the Bahamas uses whatever leverage it may have. What's more, the Bahamas has a multi-billion dollar tourist economy highly dependent on the U.S. Merrick Garland couldn't ask them for a favor? It's obvious he didn't want to, or perhaps more likely, did ask that they keep those extradition conditions as they wrote them. Wonder why. All in all, it's yet another travesty of justice. Dinesh D'Souza gets jail time for a minor campaign finance violation, and Sam Bankman-Friedman skates on far bigger manifestations of that charge. Democrats, meanwhile, have dodged a bullet about their campaign donors and how they reward them. And worst of all, President Trump gets the full frontal attack from the DOJ as the 'real' criminal here. What's wrong with this picture? Image: MIT Bitcoin Club, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0. Tweet. |. Print. |. Email. If you experience technical problems, please write to helpdesk@americanthinker.com. FOLLOW US ON.