Between his recent social posts referring to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an interview with The New York Sun and his conversation with conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried seems to be attempting a media rehabilitation tour.
Bankman-Fried suggested to Carlson on Thursday that one of the reasons he’d been given a harsh prison sentence was because he was getting closer to the Republican Party in the lead-up to his arrest.
“One fact that might be relevant. In 2020 I was center-left and I gave to Biden’s campaign,” he said. “I was optimistic he’d be a sort of solid center-left President. I spent the next few years in [Washington] DC a lot. I made dozens of trips there, and was really, really shocked by what I saw, not in a good direction, from the administration.”
“By late 2022 I was giving to Republicans privately as much as Democrats. And that started becoming known right around FTX’s…