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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<\/a> sentence for one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history.<\/p>\n In an interview<\/a> with The New York Times<\/em>, 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s response was that he is not considering it, according to The New York Times.<\/em><\/p>\n The remark puts somewhat of a stop to months of speculation inside crypto and political circles about whether Bankman-Fried<\/a> might angle for relief from a president who has frequently criticized federal prosecutors and used his pardon power aggressively.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> that diverted customer funds to prop up his hedge fund, Alameda Research, while presenting FTX as a safe and compliant exchange.\u00a0<\/p>\n The collapse wiped out billions in customer assets and triggered a global crackdown on crypto firms.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n In early 2024, Bankman-Fried gave a rare jailhouse interview<\/a> to Tucker Carlson, portraying himself as misunderstood and claiming FTX customers would have been \u201cmade whole\u201d absent government intervention.\u00a0<\/p>\n The interview circulated widely among conservative audiences and was seen by many as a calculated appeal to Trump-aligned media figures.<\/p>\n Around the same time, Bankman-Fried\u2019s parents, both Stanford law professors, sent<\/a> letters to the court seeking leniency at sentencing, emphasizing his charitable intentions and arguing that a decades-long prison term would be excessive.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bankman-Fried has also highlighted his past political realignment. Though he was one of the largest donors<\/a> to Democrats in the 2022 cycle, he later claimed<\/a> in interviews that he had secretly given comparable amounts to Republicans and had grown disillusioned with the Biden administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Trump, however, has not shown any public sympathy. While he has argued that allies prosecuted under the Biden administration were victims of a \u201cweaponized\u201d Justice Department, Bankman-Fried\u2019s case does not fit that narrative. The fraud investigation began before Biden took office and was driven by customer losses and internal FTX records.<\/p>\n President Trump did pardon<\/a> Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) in October 2025 for his 2023 guilty plea to money laundering violations, a move framed by the White House<\/a> as ending the Biden administration\u2019s \u201cwar on cryptocurrency\u201d and a potential pathway for Binance to re-enter the U.S. market.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nSam Bankman-Fried\u2019s push for a pardon<\/h2>\n