Tucker Carlson’s interview with disgraced crypto CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, which was distributed online Thursday, appeared to be a transparent ploy to get media attention with the goal of ultimately scoring a pardon from President Donald Trump. But it sounds like SBF is now paying a price for the interview. The former billionaire has reportedly been tossed into solitary confinement because the interview wasn’t approved by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, according to a new report from the New York Times.
According to the Times, the Bureau of Prisons has strict rules about how interviews are conducted with inmates, and the federal agency confirmed to the newspaper that it did not give permission for the interview with Carlson to go forward. We don’t know when the interview actually took place, though clues suggest it was Wednesday, the day before it was published online to social media platforms like Rumble and X. SBF is currently being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
It’s also not clear what kind of equipment was used to allow SBF and Carlson to communicate. It’s entirely possible SBF simply used a smuggled smartphone to talk with Carlson, and while that does seem like the most straightforward way to accomplish an interview like this, that’s purely speculative. SBF suggested in his chat with Carlson that he was really missing having high-tech devices at his disposal, though the topic only came up when the former Fox News host asked if the crypto executive was previously on stimulants before he entered prison. SBF blamed his erratic appearance in old interviews on being distracted by tech devices. Carlson took the opportunity to say that tech wasn’t healthy.
The new report from the New York Times seems to confirm what anyone with a little bit of common sense assumed when Carlson’s interview dropped: SBF, who’s currently serving a 25-year sentence for fraud after his crypto company FTX collapsed in 2022, is angling for a pardon from President Trump.
Bankman-Fried’s parents, Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried, are two law professors at Stanford and are reportedly consulting with Kory Langhofer, an Arizona lawyer who previously worked on Trump’s presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020, according to the Times. Langhofer would presumably have deep connections in Trump World, but the newspaper reports they haven’t had direct contact with Trump. At least, not yet.
But it seems like it could be an uphill climb for SBF and his family to get a pardon from Trump. The Times says the effort “does not appear to have gained traction,” and it’s easy to guess that SBF’s old associations with high-profile Democrats may be hurting his chances. However, SBF himself admitted once he was in jail that he was also secretly donating to Republicans before the implosion of FTX.
SBF said in the Thursday episode of Carlson’s show that he doesn’t believe Democrats “saved” him while being prosecuted during the Joe Biden years because they knew he was giving to Republicans as well. Carlson kept acting throughout the interview as though it’s just normal and reasonable for wealthy people who donate to politicians to expect corrupt favors from those same people in their time of need. But SBF didn’t really take the bait, saying that it would have been “inappropriate” to ask for help.
Trump recently pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the Silk Road founder convicted in 2015 who was serving a 40-year sentence for money laundering, among a host of other charges related to the darknet site. Ulbricht’s pardon was actually a campaign promise made by Trump in the lead up to the election, largely seen as a favor to the crypto community, which considers Ulbricht a hero.
Bankman-Fried never explicitly asked for a pardon from Trump during his interview either, and it seems pretty clear at this point that no matter how desperate he is to get out of prison, he’s going to let things happen behind the scenes rather than go begging. But who knows what might happen in the future. SBF turned 33 on Thursday and has only served a couple of years of a 25-year sentence.
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