Sam Bankman-Fried Parents Seeks Trump Pardon for Their Jailed Son.

Sam The parents of FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried are exploring ways to secure a pardon for the one time crypto billionaire from President Donald Trump.

A source close to the family said that the Stanford Law School Professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried had meetings in recent weeks with lawyers and other figures whom they consider are in Trump’s circle about clemency for their 32-year-old son, who received a 25 years in prison for fraud. It’s unclear if the White House received the appeal.

Bankman and Fried declined to comment. A lawyer for Bankman-Fried, who’s also filed a legal appeal of his 2023 conviction on charges tied to the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House declined to comment.

The president’s swift use of his pardon power, including for Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, has encouraged a rush among white-collar defendants eager to put their case before Trump. In seeking Trump’s mercy, The FTX founder who went from industry darling to villain overnight would be appealing to a man who went from crypto skeptic to booster.

The crypto industry and the libertarian movement strongly advocated for a pardon for Ulbricht, who was serving a life sentence for drug-trafficking and money-laundering that occurred on his site.

Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Lesser Chance of Pardon

Bankman-Fried doesn’t currently have the same groundswell of support but has previously made the case that his sentence was “draconian” since FTX customers have largely recovered most of the money they initially lost. Ryan Salame, a former FTX executive who is serving a seven-year sentence in prison, has also said he’s seeking a pardon.

The president’s early use of his pardon power contrasts with his first term, when most of his clemency orders came toward the end of his time in office. That’s typical of most presidents, including Joe Biden, who issued a flurry of pardons in his final days, including for his son and other family members and certain high-profile political opponents of Trump.

Trump pardoned a number of Republican political allies like Bannon. Bankman-Fried was once a Democratic mega-donor, but the president has also come to the aid of Democrats who say they’ve been victims of political prosecutions. Trump has been mulling intervening in the bribery case against New York Mayor Eric Adams, who’s suggested he was targeted because he criticized Biden’s immigration policies.

Furthermore,the exchange founder and Trump may share a more specific sense of injustice. US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who oversaw the FTX founder’s trial and sentenced him to decades behind bars, also presided over the defamation and sexual assault lawsuits brought against Trump by New York writer E. Jean Carroll. Both Bankman-Fried and Trump have accused Kaplan of being unfair to them.

Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School professor who helped several people receive clemency during Trump’s first term, said he’s recently received calls seeking similar assistance.