Overview
- In a New York Times interview published this week, Trump said he is not considering clemency for the jailed FTX founder.
- Bankman-Fried was convicted in 2023 and sentenced in March 2024 to 25 years in prison with an $11 billion restitution order, and he is appealing.
- The stance contrasts with Trump’s pardons of Binance’s Changpeng Zhao, Silk Road’s Ross Ulbricht, and BitMEX co-founders in 2025.
- Reported lobbying by Bankman-Fried’s parents and a media outreach effort failed to shift the White House position.
- Trump also said he would not pardon Sean “Diddy” Combs, Robert Menendez, or Nicolás Maduro, signaling tighter limits on clemency in high-profile cases.