> There is no possibility of parole in federal criminal cases, but Bankman-Fried can still shave time off his 25-year sentence with good behavior.
> "SBF may serve as little as 12.5 years, if he gets all of the jailhouse credit available to him," Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor, told CNN.
> Federal prisoners generally can earn up to 54 days of time credit a year for good behavior, which could result in an approximately 15% reduction.
> Since 2018, however, nonviolent federal inmates can reduce their sentence by as much as 50% under prison reform legislation known as the First Step Act.
I’d be in favour of amending the law to expand to cover fraud and corruption. Those are crimes that corrode social trust in a way that is analogous to challenging the state’s monopoly on violence. (And is separate from e.g. theft.)
Prison should be to rehabilitate (i.e. ensure that convict doesn't re-offend after they are released) as opposed to just punish and ruin people lives for their mistakes for the sake of making random commenters on internet feel good. Also, consider that keeping people in prison is very expensive and is not an optimal way for the state to spend you tax money IMO.
Well, sort of. Prison should be a) to rehabilitate, and b) keep the unrehabilitated from doing harm. But the American prison system is not really interested in the first bit. I'd like to see a general change here, but SBF, given his entirely unrecalcitrant behavior, is among the worst people to make the argument with.
How can you rehabilitee someone like him? It can work even with violent criminals, whose crimes was strongly related to the circumstances they were in. A guy like him who stole billions? What could anyone ever do to convince him to not commit fraud again if given the opportunity...
> What could anyone ever do to convince him to not commit fraud again if given the opportunity...
IMO 10 years in prison should be more than enough to discourage SBF from repeating it. And if it is not enough, then 30 years won't be enough either...
Why? What would change in those years? I'd bet that he would be still extremely likely to commit fraud or other financial crimes (if presented the opportunity) after he got out. Maybe letting him keep a few billion would entice him to retire early (not sure if that's the most reasonable option).
> then 30 years won't be enough either
But it's not about deterring him. It's about preventing him from doing any more damage to the society and potentially deterring other people from committing the same crime. IMHO this is one sector where draconian sentences might be actually very effective, people in finance tend to be more rational and calculating than average. If you get a to steal a few billion and maybe somehow stash a proportion of that spending 5 years in prison might seem like a reasonable deal, that's pushing it but maybe even 10, not > 30 though.
> as opposed to just punish and ruin people lives for their mistakes for the sake of making random commenters on internet feel good
That is a strawman.
Besides (potentially) rehabilitation, prison serves to protect the populace from dangerous people who would harm others and as a deterrent to others who can see what punishment they might get if they do something illegal.
I am not claiming prison does a good job of these things, just that its goal is not to "ruin people's lives".
> Besides (potentially) rehabilitation, prison serves to protect the populace from dangerous people who would harm others and as a deterrent to others who can see what punishment they might get if they do something illegal.
It is not like he will be getting away with a slap on the wrist one way or another. I just don't see more years in prison past some reasonable threshold as a good deterrent.
> I am not claiming prison does a good job of these things, just that its goal is not to "ruin people's lives".
> no single crime, violent or not, really challenges the state's monopoly on violence
Sure. And many murders remain unsolved. We treat murder differently from other crimes that result in human death in part due to instinct, but in part because when we don’t it becomes a political tool.
I wonder if there's a name for this rhetorical device: like casually insert shocking statements about atrocities committed by those in power. Chomsky uses it extensively.
why would Biden do that? plenty of his guys got burned by crypto, and the democratic donations are soaring due to DJT's continued proto-fascistic behavior, not via SBF or his family's efforts.
it's like saying Trump could pardon him on the way in -- and might
> it's like saying Trump could pardon him on the way in
That is more likely than a Biden pardon: Trump in his first term was big on pardoning both financial criminals and people involved in political corruption on both sides of the aisle, and SBF is both a financial criminal and someone involved in political corruption (on both sides of the aisle, even), so he is something of an ideal Trump pardon candidate.
I read in the Michael Lewis book that at one point SBF was floating the idea of paying Trump not to run, and asked around for what a reasonable number would be, and figured it would be around 50 billion
He was one of Biden's biggest donors and generally supports democrats.
>Bankman-Fried’s largest donations were $27 million to his own super PAC, which supported Democratic candidates, and $6 million to a PAC that helps elect Democrats to the U.S. House. Bankman-Fried also gave the maximum $5,800 each to support dozens of candidates, mostly Democrats.
>President Joe Biden’s 2020 run for president was one of the major beneficiaries of Bankman-Fried’s donations. Bankman-Fried gave $5 million to a PAC that supported President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, $50,000 to Biden Victory Fund, and $2,800 directly to Biden for President.
"The mission of the U.S. Parole Commission is to promote public safety and strive for justice and fairness in the exercise of its authority to release and revoke offenders under its jurisdiction."
The pardon power is constitutionally absolute and unreviewable — the president can pardon for any reason, or none. Some people dislike that, but I personally like it, because it acts as an ultimate safety valve on the state’s ability to persecute an individual.
The question is more "why would the President self-immolate themselves politically for someone who appears to have minimal actual political capital, especially now that they're broke?"
Presidents generally don't suffer much from pardoning the wrong person.
There's maybe one President that didn't get elected because of his use of the pardon. But then, Ford wasn't elected President or Vice President before he pardoned Nixon either.
Otherwise, I'm not aware of a pardon so controversial that it became a major campaign issue. And for a second term President, there's not really any downside.
Because the pattern they usually follow is to pardon the questionable cases (personal friends, people with financial ties to the President, etc.) just before they go out of office.
And in exchange for this "safety valve" you get the potential for absolute and unreviewable corruption by giving one person the authority to arbitrarily override the judicial branch at will. And to do the same with the legislative branch through executive order.
If America mistrusts government so much that it wants the President to be a de facto monarch, it should just drop the pretense at being a republic and have a monarchy already. Or make the oligarchy official and elect a CEO in chief. At least then there's only one head for the CIA to put a bullet into.
The "state" being the federal government in this case and not any individual state. The president cannot pardon state-level offenses, that is at the discretion of that state.
Yeah man, everybody knows this. The question is why would any president BOTHER pardoning SBF? It's an idiotic move. Literally no one is defending SBF besides his lawyers
There is a more than 0% chance we will re-elect a man that has shown that he does not mind partaking in incredibly corrupt business practices out in the open. We don't even know if they would pardon themselves for crimes and has argued that they should have full immunity to do anything, including harming his adversaries. This person would not need an excuse to do anything.
> Ryan Salame, who was the CEO of FTX’s digital markets division, donated millions of dollars to Republican political action committees and affiliated “dark money” groups with funds from FTX’s affiliated hedge fund, Alameda Research, according to the documents. Salame pleaded guilty last month to federal campaign finance and money-transmitting crimes. Caroline Ellison, who ran Alameda and once dated Bankman-Fried, also gave millions to right-leaning nonprofit groups, the documents say.
> Bankman-Fried donated $10 million to a [Mitch] McConnell-linked group named One Nation in August 2022, according to the evidence filed by prosecutors. The money came directly from an Alameda Research account, prosecutors said.
There's little reason to believe any of that influence remains now that he's broke.
> The purpose of those donations, he said, was to fund political initiatives supported by Bankman-Fried. In a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday, prosecutors said they had obtained private messages in which Salame wrote that Bankman-Fried wanted to support politicians in both parties who were “pro crypto,” while working to get “anti crypto” lawmakers out of office.
> Salame doled out more than $24 million to Republican political candidates during his time at FTX, and he was the 11th largest individual U.S. political donor in 2022 according to OpenSecrets.org. In a court filing last month, prosecutors shared “private messages” from Salame that purport to show him explaining how he was used as a straw donor to secretly funnel money from FTX and Bankman-Fried.
> In one interview last November, Bankman-Fried admitted to donating roughly equal amounts to Democrats and Republicans but made sure that “all my Republican donations were dark.” He said he did this because he felt the press had a tendency to “freak” when donations were made to the Grand Old Party (GOP). At the 2022 midterm campaign funding cycle, he said he may have been the “second or third biggest” GOP donor.
Nobody on the left wants to see him walk free, either. His remaining political capital is nill. Politicians only care about rich donors if they remain rich donors.
If you want to believe a known fraudster saying “oh yeah I totally donated to the winning side, but I didn’t tell anyone”, that’s on you. But it doesn’t change the fact that Trump is very unlikely to pardon someone who publically donated to his opponent, and maybe privately donated to some random GOP members he refers to as “the swamp”. And that’s only if we take as fact some guys “oh yeah I used stolen money to make political donations, but I was just following orders” statement as uttered in a trial.
No shit. If you scroll up, I assert "FTX was attempting to buy influence on both sides of the aisle" and mention Salame numerous times. Please don't blame me for a lack of reading comprehension on your part.
SBF's texts to Salame about all this were obtained by prosecutors, garnering a guilty plea. I've presented a number of links to reputable sources, to which your replies amount to "nuh uh", so I think I'm out.
You’ve yet to produce a single bit of evidence supporting the claim that Trump is somehow more likely to pardon him than Biden, which if you could read you’d know is what I contested.
If you're cynical enough to believe donating cash to politicians directly buys pardons - then surely you're also cynical enough to realise the politician doesn't have to uphold their end of the bargain.
It's not like SBF is going to be making any big future donations.
Donors hoping for favours know donations only buy so much; the politician takes the money in order to improve their chances of getting elected. If you want a favour which noticeably reduces their chance of getting re-elected - you won't get it.
