President Donald Trump said this week that he has no intention of pardoning Sam Bankman-Fried, the former FTX chief executive 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 Times, Trump was asked whether he would consider granting clemency to several high-profile inmates. Among the names raised was Bankman-Fried, the onetime cryptocurrency billionaire convicted in 2023 of stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers. Trump’s response was that he is not considering it, according to The New York Times.
The remark puts somewhat of a stop to months of speculation inside crypto and political circles about whether Bankman-Fried might angle for 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 on seven counts, including wire fraud and conspiracy. Prosecutors said he orchestrated a scheme that diverted customer funds to prop up his hedge fund, Alameda Research, while presenting FTX as a safe and compliant exchange. The collapse wiped out billions in customer assets and triggered a global crackdown on crypto firms.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s push for a pardon
Since his conviction, Bankman-Fried and those close to him have pursued multiple avenues that appeared designed to soften his public image and create openings for clemency. In early 2024, Bankman-Fried gave a rare jailhouse interview to Tucker Carlson, portraying himself as misunderstood and claiming FTX customers would have been “made whole” absent government intervention. The interview circulated widely among conservative audiences and was seen by many 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 seeking leniency at sentencing, emphasizing his charitable intentions and arguing that a decades-long prison term 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 his past political realignment. Though he was one of the largest donors to Democrats in the 2022 cycle, he later claimed in interviews that he had secretly given comparable amounts to Republicans and had grown disillusioned with the Biden administration. Those comments were widely interpreted as an attempt to distance himself from Democratic power centers and signal openness to a future Republican-led clemency process.
Trump, however, has not shown any public sympathy. While he 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 driven by customer losses and internal FTX records.
President Trump did pardon 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 ending the Biden administration’s 'war on cryptocurrency' and a potential pathway for Binance to re-enter the U.S. market.