Sam Bankman-Fried Spared a Second Trial 52
In a letter (PDF) citing "strong public interest in a prompt resolution," U.S. prosecutors said they do not plan to proceed with a second trial of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). The Register reports: The prosecutors reasoned that much of the evidence that would be submitted had already been considered in his October trial -- an event which yielded a guilty verdict after just four hours of jury deliberation. Although forgoing an additional trial means not holding SBF accountable for conspiracy to make unlawful campaign contributions, additional court dates would most certainly delay a scheduled March 2024 sentencing, as it would require negotiating with The Bahamas regarding terms of extradition.
SBF was extradited to the US from The Bahamas, where his crypto exchange FTX was headquartered, in December 2022. While the island nation agreed to extradition on seven out of eight charges, local authorities did not consent to extradition on a charge of conspiracy to make unlawful campaign contributions. US courts were therefore unable to pursue the eighth charge.
SBF's first trial yielded seven guilty verdicts. Those included two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Together they carry a combined maximum sentence of 110 years. However, even though the campaign finance charge was not pursued, it could be considered relevant in sentencing matters, wrote the attorneys in their filing. The prosecutors' letter detailed that the sentencing judgment will also "likely include orders of forfeiture and restitution for the victims of the defendant's crimes."
SBF was extradited to the US from The Bahamas, where his crypto exchange FTX was headquartered, in December 2022. While the island nation agreed to extradition on seven out of eight charges, local authorities did not consent to extradition on a charge of conspiracy to make unlawful campaign contributions. US courts were therefore unable to pursue the eighth charge.
SBF's first trial yielded seven guilty verdicts. Those included two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Together they carry a combined maximum sentence of 110 years. However, even though the campaign finance charge was not pursued, it could be considered relevant in sentencing matters, wrote the attorneys in their filing. The prosecutors' letter detailed that the sentencing judgment will also "likely include orders of forfeiture and restitution for the victims of the defendant's crimes."
Total US DoJ Corruption (Score:5, Insightful)
Their excuse is that it's not in the public interest to know which politicians were bribed with stolen FTX funds?
How much did attorney general Garland get in payments? This is banana republic tier selective enforcement of laws.
Re:Total US DoJ Corruption (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.opensecrets.org/el... [opensecrets.org]
#7
Sam Bankman-Fried FTX.US Washington, DC
Total $40,734,790
Hard Money $1,547,790
Outside $39,187,000
Democrats $37,650,390
Republicans $286,700
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That is how this country works.
Re:Total US DoJ Corruption (Score:4, Insightful)
It says that Democrats got a lot of money from Sam Bankman-Fried.
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According to the numbers he disclosed. He, the guy who built his career on financial fraud and money laundering.
I'm not sure where your confidence in his full disclosure comes from.
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Felony convictions usually require proof. Maybe the courts were wrong and SBF is just a swell, trustworthy guy.
But no, I don't have any "actual proof" that would fit your discerning standard.
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In direct contributions.
There's a reason why "dark money" is called "dark money".
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LOL
This old saw again? The DoJ isn't investigating his political donation shenanigans so you'll never know! Of course the current DoJ is just trying to protect Republicans and their dark money channels. Right? Right?!?!
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It says that Democrats got a lot of money from Sam Bankman-Fried.
You've blown my mind that a political party would get a campaign contribution from a rich private person or entity and that this contribution is one sided. Who would have thought this possible! How is this even a democracy! I mean this is UNHEARD of!
Oh wait turns out that private campaign financing has been going on since Andrew Jackson took office in the 1820s.
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Do you really want to crack open the can of worms where you find large amounts of political donations made by a contemptuous and detestable person to a particular political party, and then make various assertions on that?
Think the Republicans get a few donations from coal and oil? Insurance industry? Banking? Big Telecom? Pharma?
Yeah, best leave that argument on the shelf, sport.
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This speaks for itself, doesn't it?
And what does it say? This is normal. Campaign contributions to a party you support is literally a SOP for any Fortune 500 company.
You think politicians run their campaigns on individual contributions from average joe voters?
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Re:Total US DoJ Corruption (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess you ignored this part: "much of the evidence that would be submitted had already been considered"
What part of another public trial would inform the public interest on "which politicians were bribed with stolen FTX funds" if the evidence is already public?
"How much did attorney general Garland get in payments? This is banana republic tier selective enforcement of laws."
I'm sure Trump will fix it, right? It's "banana republic tier" alright, banana republic tier conspiracy theory.
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He used to post here sometimes, but I haven't seen him around recently. We could sure use him now.
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They factored out the part that involves political parties, got their conviction, and then decided there is no need to do the party/campaign charges.
Straight up, bald faced corruption: just another day ending in Y at the Biden DOJ.
Re:Total US DoJ Corruption (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, they don't want to cause an international incident by pissing off the Bahamian government, so that the next time some fraudulent shitbag tries to steal billions of dollars from people and hide there, the Bahamian government might actually take the phone call.
No, I'm sure it's that they want to keep quiet the public campaign finance reports that already show how much money he was funneling into DC, and to whom. And I'm sure it's because the "weaponized Biden DoJ" isn't at all interested in finding additional non-reported and extra-legal "dark money" payments that were made to Republicans, which even SBF said exist because Republicans preferred their bribes as dark money contributions.
Do you even think before coming up with this crap? Please just think a little.
Re:Total US DoJ Corruption (Score:5, Informative)
No, their excuse is that they made a deal with the Bahamas, and if they don't live up to it, they'll have serious problems ever extraditing people from the Bahamas again, regardless of what crimes they're accused of or how compelling the evidence. Or a lot of other countries, for that matter, once they prove they can't be trusted to keep their word.
There are similar issues with extraditing from Mexico (and other countries), which has constitutional guarantees against the death penalty and life without parole [loc.gov]. Mexico has, in fact, refused to extradite dozens of people in the last couple of decades, including accused murderers and (child) rapists, even though the evidence was otherwise compelling enough, because sufficient guarantees against life without parole could not be given.
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It's just a cohencidence. Fuggetaboutit.
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The Attorney General doesn't run for office. He is appointed by the President, and confirmed by the United States Senate.
We already know which politicians were directly bribed by SBF, as the campaigns receiving the donations have to make quarterly reports on their donors, and those reports are public.
I'm sure he gave lots more to various dark money groups and such, but you're never going to learn where that money went after they got their hands on it. And it is very much a bipartisan concern to not crack
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How much did attorney general Garland get in payments? This is banana republic tier selective enforcement of laws.
Exactly. How can we have justice if SBF only serves 110 years in jail instead of longer!
But a big part of the second trail (Score:5, Insightful)
should be who knowingly took large amounts of money that SBF worked hard to keep hidden (the money and the source) from regulators.
Convicting SBF on election fraud should be the first step to getting the politicians who took the dirty money. Heck, prosecutors could have struck a deal with SBF. Tell us everything so we can put some politicians in jail, and we'll drop charges. Not going to happen now.
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"...who knowingly took large amounts of money that SBF..."
Did they break any laws? Seems like you're less concerned with that. If there's evidence, not trying SBF doesn't mean not trying others.
"Convicting SBF on election fraud..."
What is the election fraud?
"...politicians who took the dirty money." "Heck, prosecutors could have struck a deal with SBF."
Love how you assume you know all the crimes and who committed them. If there is evidence, trying SBF, or not, doesn't affect others who are guilty. The a
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should be who knowingly took large amounts of money
Do you realise that politicians taking money for campaign financing has been going on 100 years now? Literally. Andrew Jackson started this in the 1820s.
Taking money is not illegal, and I doubt SBF went up to Democrats and said "hey, I have this money for you, but please know it is dirty money that I am hiding from the regulator and embezzled from my company".
I normally use the words "highly doubt" but it is clear SBF is quite the idiot, so "doubt" it has to remain.
Directly to the big house then (Score:2)
Ignore "maximum sentence" (Score:2)
That's like theoretical maximum floating point performance. It will seldom be met in reality.
The Sentencing Guidelines are a series of points and charts that take into account criminal history, violence, amount stolen, and whether the convict was a leader or a follower, and doubtless many other things. Some lawyers explain in more detail at https://www.serioustrouble.sho... [serioustrouble.show]
Some of those look black for SBF, especially the sheer amount of money.
Tell me again (Score:2)
Who stands to benefit from the illegal campaign contributions charge?
Which political extremist group, the far left or far right, stands to benefit?
What is the political narrative that stands to be satisfied by levying this charge?
Why does the media care so much about this? (Score:2)
Why does The Register care so much about the last charge of illegal campaign contributions?
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Because it is a shock to everyone that someone donates to politicians. An utter scandal. Look at the most upvoted comments here, people seem to be especially concerned that it's democrats, I mean how dare SBF contribute $37million to democrats. That's a big number. I mean not as big as Adelson's $100m contribution to Trump, but hey look over there Democrats got money and therefore it's a scandal! /s Idiots everywhere.
Re: Why does the media care so much about this? (Score:3)
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No. It's because a now-convicted criminal was one of the largest donors in the election cycle
And? He was convicted of how he got money. Did his contribution change anything? Looks like he was extradited, found guilty, and is facing 110 years in prison as judged by someone who received none of this money.
What it seems like is a pointless nothing burger. A distraction. There's nothing to resolve here because frankly all evidence shows that nothing happened.
Now if SBF suddenly gets a presidential pardon, let's get out the pitchforks. If wires get released showing that diplomats tried to get SBF off th
Surely nobody will even pretend to be surprised... (Score:3)
that the Biden admin will do the absolute minimum it thinks it must be seen to be doing in the prosecution of the #2 (behind only actual Hitler-era NAZI collaborator George Soros) funder of the Democrat party? This would be the same exact justice department that never did anything about the criminal activity of the FBI (lying repeatedly to the FISA courts) as it tried to get rid of Republican Trump, and which is currently trying to jail Trump (chief political rival of Biden).
Whatever you think of Trump or Biden or Obama, or Clinton, etc, set it aside. The stakes are much larger. We're in Hunta territory here.
The current administration is taking things to previously unimaginable levels of political corruption that no previous president of either party ever contemplated - and setting precedents all future presidents (of any party) will be able to use along the way. This could become impossible to untangle. In the 1970s, one of the articles of impeachment Democrats filed against corrupt Republican Nixon was that he TALKED about using government agencies against political opponents (not that he did it, but that he talked about it). One could argue that they were just being political, or one could argue that they properly saw the danger of even tolerating TALK of such abuses by people in a position to carry them out. Fast-forward only a few decades to 2016 and the Obama admin actually did it, using the FBI, DOJ, IRS, State Department, etc to try to stop Trump. For those who think there was something innocent in the Obama admin effort to stop Trump at any cost, please READ the Durham report; it exposed a briefing of Obama (and his then-VP Biden) in the summer of 2016 on the Clinton campaign dirty trick of Trump-Russia Collusion accusations - they were told it was not real and was a dirty trick. Therefore, their agencies KNEW all along that there was no actual substance to the fabricated accusations, yet they hounded their political opponent as a candidate, as a president-elect, and left people within the bureaucracy to sabotage his administration. The rate at which our political classes are going into previously uncharted depths of illegality and corruption is breathtaking. Anybody can now easily predict which people will be convicted of politics-related crimes and which will mysteriously have the statute of limitations accidentally run, or be determined to have been punished enough, and which people will have false evidence "found" and used against them versus those whose actual incriminating evidence will be "misplaced"
I have, for years, warned Slashdotters that this was headed to bad places and that people should not cheer for it when it benefitted their side, yet I have been modded "troll" by people whose side benefitted, only to later see them fretting that their opponent might do to them what was done for them previously. My concern has NEVER been about the particular politicians I name - I name them because they are the specific ones involved at the time, and the ones who are the victims or victimizers are AT THAT TIME in history. Were this 1973, I'd be pointing at the abuses of the Nixon team, but it's 2023 and Biden is doing it. This is far bigger and more bad than "my side" or "your side". People need to wake up and see that the entire professional political class is way outside the bounds and swerving off a cliff. Reminder: right before the Civil War (the election of 1860) Democrats removed a Republican presidential candidate (Abraham Lincoln) from the ballots in ten states - the politics of today are rapidly reaching dangerously corrupt levels. They did not stop there back in 1860; they split the country with an actual shooting war, and then assassinated Lincoln. Why does anybody think things will end well this time?