President Donald Trump said this week that he has no intention of pardoning Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX who is serving a lengthy federal prison sentence for one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history.
In an interview with The New York TimesTrump was asked if he would consider granting clemency to several high-profile inmates. Among the names raised was Bankman-Fried, the former cryptocurrency billionaire convicted in 2023 of stealing billions of dollars from FTX clients.
Trump’s response was that he is not considering it, according to The New York Times.
The comment ends months of speculation within crypto and political circles about whether Bankman-Fried could seek relief from a president who has frequently criticized federal prosecutors and used his pardon power aggressively.
Bankman-Fried was sentenced in November 2024 to 25 years in prison after a New York jury found him guilty of seven counts, including wire fraud and conspiracy. Prosecutors said he orchestrated a scheme that diverted client funds to prop up his hedge fund, Alameda Research, while presenting FTX as a safe and compliant exchange.
The crash wiped out billions in client assets and triggered a global crackdown on crypto companies.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s push for clemency
Since his conviction, Bankman-Fried and those close to him have pursued multiple avenues that seemed designed to soften his public image and create opportunities for clemency.
In early 2024, Bankman-Fried gave a rare jailhouse interview to Tucker Carlson, portraying himself as misunderstood and claiming that FTX clients would have been “compensated” without government intervention.
The interview was widely circulated among conservative audiences and many saw it as a calculated appeal to Trump-aligned media figures.
Around the same time, Bankman-Fried’s parents, both Stanford law professors, sent letters to the court asking for leniency in sentencing, emphasizing her charitable intentions and arguing that a decades-long prison sentence would be excessive.
While not directed at Trump, the effort reinforced a broader strategy of reframing Bankman-Fried as a flawed but non-malicious actor rather than a criminal mastermind.
Bankman-Fried has also highlighted her past political realignment. Although he was one of the largest donors to Democrats in the 2022 cycle, he later claimed in interviews that he had secretly donated comparable amounts to Republicans and had become disillusioned with the Biden administration.
Those comments were widely interpreted as an attempt to distance himself from Democratic power centers and signal an openness to a future Republican-led pardon process.
Trump, however, has not shown any public sympathy. While she has argued that allies prosecuted under the Biden administration were victims of a “weaponized” Justice Department, Bankman-Fried’s case does not fit that narrative. The fraud investigation began before Biden took office and was fueled by customer losses and internal FTX records.
President Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) in October 2025 for his 2023 guilty plea to money laundering violations, a move framed by the White House as the end of the Biden administration’s “war on cryptocurrencies” and a potential path for Binance to re-enter the US market.
