Share this article
Trump says he won't rescue Sam Bankman-Fried with pardon
The president told the New York Times he won't pardon ex-FTX CEO SBF, nor will he be granting help to Sean Combs or Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro.
Updated Jan 9, 2026, 1:31 p.m. Published Jan 8, 2026, 10:43 p.m.
Make us preferred on Google
What to know:
- President Donald Trump told reporters that he will not pardon former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Friend, according to an interview published by the New York Times.
- The president has previously used his clemency powers to aid other crypto insiders, including former Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao.
Imprisoned former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried shouldn't count on a clemency order from President Donald Trump, according to remarks in a wide-ranging interview the president granted to the New York Times.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
While talking about his decision not to extend his presidential pardoning power to free rapper Sean "Diddy" Combs from prostitution-related charges, Trump said he also didn't intend to help out the ex-CEO of crypto exchange FTX on his 25-year fraud sentence.
Bankman-Fried had conducted a Republican-friendly media rehabilitation tour in recent months, but he hasn't seemingly made his case to Trump, who is a major political backer of the cryptocurrency sector and a digital assets entrepreneur in his own right. The disgraced CEO's parents, former Stanford Law School professors Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman, had reportedly been meeting with lawyers and other people in Trump's orbit in an attempt to get their son a pardon.
Combs and Bankman-Fried have shared an appeal attorney, Alexandra Shapiro, and the two were apparently in the same dormitory at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
While Trump was dashing SBF's clemency hopes to Times reporters, he ran through a list of other high-profile legal cases in which he doesn't intend to extend presidential mercy. They include former New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez and Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela recently captured by the U.S. on narco-terrorism charges.
Trump did recently pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández for importing cocaine to the U.S., a move Bankman-Fried has repeatedly praised on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
In the crypto sector, the president has pardoned ex-Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht and the co-founders of BitMEX.
