Incarcerated FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) has reawakened controversy by directly challenging the narrative of his arrest. In a post shared on GETTR, which was most likely penned or published with help from a friend, Bankman-Fried painted a picture of political retaliation by the Biden administration’s regulators. 

He claims that his change in political alignment and donations led to the timing of his December 2022 arrest, which he says was meant to silence him ahead of congressional testimony and an important crypto bill.

SBF Says Arrest Was Politically Motivated

In his GETTR post, SBF recalls that in 2020, he identified as center-left. But by 2022, he says, witnessing what he describes as aggressive regulatory moves by then-SEC Chair Gary Gensler and the DOJ under President Biden made him more wary of the Democratic position on crypto.

After this, he started to privately donate millions to Republican campaigns alongside his public Democratic donations. However, his newly aligned donations to Republican causes, he claims, precipitated regulatory attention that soon came knocking.

“In 2020, I was center-left. By 2022—having seen Gensler/Biden’s DOJ on crypto—I was a centrist, and (privately) donated tens of millions to Republicans,” he wrote.

Reports by CBS showed that Sam Bankman-Fried made about $40 million in political donations in the 2022 election cycle. A huge chunk of these donations (about $27 million) was made to “Protect Our Future PAC,” a group that spent $24.2 million to campaign for 19 Democratic House candidates. 

Interestingly, in a November 2022 interview, Bankman-Fried noted that his donations to Republican causes were nearly equal to those given to Democrats, though they were largely made behind the scenes to avoid reporters catching on.

Arrest Timing Raises Claims Of Suppressed Testimony

Back to the GETTR post, Bankman-Fried contends that his arrest was carefully timed. He says it came just weeks before a crypto regulation bill he had been working on was set for a vote and on the eve of the hearing where he was expected to testify before Congress.

His claim aligns with complaints by House Republicans, who have argued the arrest may have been orchestrated to block his testimony. They demanded that Gensler release communications concerning the timing of actions taken by the SEC and DOJ.

However, the internal SEC messages during the relevant period were destroyed or lost, as former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s government-issued phone underwent an enterprise wipe that erased all texts between October 2022 and September 2023. The SEC Office of Inspector General confirmed that data on the device was deleted, attributing the wipe to automated IT policy and failure to sync the phone to SEC systems.

Meanwhile, SBF continues serving a 25-year sentence after being found guilty on seven criminal counts.