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.
