In NYT Interview, Trump Indicates No Pardon for Sam Bankman-Fried

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President Donald Trump told The New York Times that he has no plans to pardon former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, despite the jailed exec’s attempts for clemency.

During a two-hour-long interview, Trump spoke on a wide range of topics from US oversight over Venezuela and its ousted leader Nicolás Maduro, to whether he would consider pardoning several high-profile figures, including Bankman-Fried.

The list included Maduro, former New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, music power player Sean “Diddy” Combs — and Bankman-Fried, The New York Times reported.

Bankman-Fried was convicted in 2023 during the Biden administration on multiple fraud and conspiracy charges for stealing billions of customers’ funds from his now-bankrupt crypto exchange, FTX. He is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence and is in the process of trying to appeal the conviction.

Over the past year, he has been active on his X account, which says its posts are Bankman-Fried’s words, but shared by a friend. In December, Bankman-Fried praised Trump’s pardon of ex-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández and said “few are more deserving than him.”