Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) used a new X thread on Feb. 9 to reframe his criminal case as “Biden’s political lawfare,” positioning himself alongside Donald Trump and former FTX executive Ryan Salame in what read like a direct appeal for a future pardon.
“Biden’s lawfare machine threw bogus charges at me, Donald Trump, Ryan Salame, etc.,” Bankman-Fried wrote. “To make the charges stick, they prevented us from even being allowed to respond.” He opened with a blunt claim about process rather than facts: “Rule No. 1 of Biden’s political lawfare: Don’t let them present evidence.”
SBF Cries ‘Gagged Trial,’ Claims DOJ Hid Evidence
SBF’s argument hinges on the idea that authorities and the court curtailed what the jury could hear. He repeatedly singled out Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over his trial, claiming the court “rubber-stamped everything Biden’s DOJ wanted” and “made sure I couldn’t show the jury the truth.”
The “truth,” as SBF cast it, is a solvency narrative: “So they lied, said I stole billions of dollars and bankrupted FTX. But the money was always there and FTX was always solvent.” He also argued that restrictions prevented him from advancing that line at trial, writing that he was “prohibited” from “pointing out FTX was solvent” and from “even mentioning lawyers.”
In the thread, SBF linked to a court filing he said was authored by his prosecutor, “Sassoon,” describing it as “a 70-page document on all the evidence they didn’t want the jury to see,” and he framed the episode as part of a broader political effort to “silence the truth.”
A significant chunk of the thread is dedicated to Trump’s New York hush-money bookkeeping case, which Bankman-Fried portrayed as a routine classification dispute blown into criminality. “Charged him with 34 crimes over his bookkeeping of an NDA expense—should it be legal, campaign, or personal?,” he wrote. “These questions come up all the time when you’re running a business, and it’s often unclear.”
He then drew a parallel between court-imposed limits on Trump and his own pre-trial detention. “They then got the judge to impose a gag order on Donald Trump,” he wrote. “Biden’s DOJ silenced me, too—getting Judge Kaplan to gag and then jail me before trial. President Trump also had Kaplan as a judge.”
Bankman-Fried also amplified Salame’s complaints about licensing advice and charging decisions, alleging prosecutors leaned on pressure tactics to force a plea, including claims involving Salame’s fiancée, assertions presented as fact in the thread but not accompanied by supporting documentation beyond links to Salame’s posts.
The reaction underneath was unsparing, with multiple industry figures interpreting the thread less as a legal critique than a political pitch. “You’re a Delusional criminal who is now angling for a pardon,” wrote trader Bob Loukas. Attorney Ariel Givner was even more direct: “We GET it. You want a pardon from Trump.”
At press time, FTT traded at $0.3021.
