Crypto grifter Sam Bankman-Freid swoons over GOP as he lobbies for prison pardon from Trump #CriptoNews

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Crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried told Tucker Carlson in a jailhouse interview that he began to turn his back on Democrats years ago and developed a better relationship with Republicans — a revelation that appeared to be part of his current strategy to win a pardon from President Donald Trump amid his 25-year prison sentence.

“I don’t think I’m a criminal,” he also told Carlson at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, where he noted that fellow inmate Sean “Diddy” Combs, who has been charged with sex crimes, has been “kind” to him.

Bankman-Fried was convicted two years ago of seven counts of wireand securities fraud and money laundering in the collapse of his crypto exchange, FTX.

He misappropriated billions of dollars of customer funds deposited with FTX, defrauded FTX investors of more than $1.7 billion, and defrauded lenders to his cryptocurrency trading fund Alameda of more than $1.3 billion, according to the Department of Justice.

Bankman-Fried’s plans for a “comeback” as FTX was imploding was to “go on Tucker Carlsen, come out as Republican,” according to notes to himself revealed in an exhibit in the federal case against him.

He and his family have reportedly been stepping up a drive to win a pardon from Trump.

Bankman-Fried’s parents, Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried, both Stanford University law professors who are active in the Democratic Party, are consulting with Kory Langhofer, an Arizona lawyer who worked for Trump’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, The New York Times reported Friday.

There’s no indication they have had any contact yet with Trump or with a close adviser, The Times noted.

Bankman-Fried told Carlson on Thursday, which was his 33rd birthday: “In 2020, I was center-left and I gave to Biden’s campaign. I was optimistic he would be a center-left president … [but] I was really really shocked by what I saw there … and not in a good direction.”

He claimed he gradually developed a better relationship with Republicans, adding: “By late 2022 I was giving to Republicans as much as Democrats.”

In another sop to Republicans and Trump, Bankman-Fried co-wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post last month arguing that Mr. Trump’s plans for a sovereign wealth fund could help “dramatically increase corporate productivity.”

As for Combs, who is on the same cellblock as Bankman-Fried, he said: “I’ve only seen one piece of him, which is Diddy in prison, and he’s been kind to people in the unit; he’s been kind to me, It’s a position no one wants to be in,” he added, apparently referring to imprisonment, or imprisonment facing the charges he’s facing.

Trump has already pardoned hordes of criminals, including some 1,500 MAGA supporters whom he hailed as “patriots” who stormed the nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021 to overturn the results of the presidential election of Joe Biden.

Dozens of the defendants also had prior convictions or pending charges for crimes including rape, sexual abuse of a minor, domestic violence, manslaughter, production of child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, according to records.

Some have since been re-arrested for outstanding crimes or new ones committed after their release.

Trump also recently pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the notorious Silk Road internet drug marketplace. He was serving a life sentence.