President Donald Trump said this week that he has no intention of pardoning Sam Bankman-Fried, the former FTX executive who is serving a lengthy federal prison sentence for one of the largest financial frauds in US history.
In an interview with New York TimesTrump was asked if he would consider pardoning more high-profile inmates. Among the names raised was Bankman-Fried, the former cryptocurrency billionaire who was convicted in 2023 of stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers.
Trump’s response was that he is not considering it, according to New York Times.
The remark somewhat ends months of speculation in crypto and political circles about whether Bankman-Fried could seek emergency relief from a president who has frequently criticized federal prosecutors and aggressively used his pardon power.
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 client funds to support his hedge fund, Alameda Research, while presenting FTX as a safe and compliant exchange.
The collapse wiped out billions in client assets and triggered a global crackdown on crypto firms.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s push for a pardon
Since his conviction, Bankman-Fried and those closest to him have pursued several avenues that appeared designed to soften his public image and create openings for clemency.
In early 2024, Bankman-Fried gave a rare prison interview to Tucker Carlson in which he portrayed himself as misguided and claimed that FTX customers would have been “whole” without 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 asking for leniency in 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-malevolent actor rather than a criminal mastermind.
Bankman-Fried has also highlighted his previous political transition. Although 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 become disillusioned with the Biden administration.
These comments were widely interpreted as an attempt to distance himself from Democratic power centers and signal openness to a future Republican-led pardon process.
However, Trump has shown no 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 pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) in October 2025 for his 2023 indictment on money laundering violations, a move the White House had framed as an end to the Biden administration’s “war on cryptocurrency” and a potential path for Binance to re-enter the US market.