FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Will Still Face Campaign Finance-Related Charge: DOJ

Prosecutors still plan to bring a campaign finance related charge against FTX founder Sam Baman freed after two weeks saying they couldn't do to treaty obligations. Joining us now to discuss is our own Elvis Coindesk global policy and regulation. Managing editor Nick Day who is also the editor of Coin State of crypto newsletter with his own team of hound dogs. Good morning. Uh Nick. Ok. Uh Let's talk about what happened here. Why the DOJ changed its mind? Why are they now, how, how are they a going after Sam Be Winfried over this whole thing with uh uh campaign finance? So I don't know if the DOJ did indeed change its mind, right? If you look back at the late July, notice that the DOJ sent saying that they were going to drop the campaign finance charge. What they said specifically is it wasn't in the extradition paperwork that the Bahamas created when they arrested Sam Beman Fried. And so uh under treaty obligations, the US couldn't bring that specific charge. Um What the DOJ said yesterday is OK, fine. We're not gonna bring that specific charge. We will fold the allegations into a different charge and still, you know, bring forward the campaign finance claims and try Sam Bangari on them when he goes to trial in October. And, uh, you know, how many charges are we looking at here? Uh, so we're looking at a total of seven and they're basically, uh, you know, everything that was initially alleged back in December of 2022. So, wire fraud conspiracy for wire fraud, uh, securities fraud and, uh, commodities fraud conspiracy for fraud, things like that. And uh what's that? Yeah, Brian Salami is, it can be. Yeah. Yeah. So, so Ryan Salami is uh uh uh he's, he's singing like a songbird. So the timing of that report I would say is interesting. Um Ryan Slaw made the, you know, one of the key things from his end, you know, as far as the allegations are concerned is that the implications over the last couple months seem to have been that he has been kind of the Republican uh donor on Sam Ban Quin Freed's behalf. Uh So where Sam Ban Quin Fried was donating to Democrats publicly and, you know, under his name, Salame was in charge of routing money to Republicans to, you know, ensure that all their bases were covered. So if he's, you know, as I think we can assume from yesterday's reporting, uh going to turn witness at Sam's trial pursuant to a plea deal, then we might get a lot more information about, you know, how exactly uh you know, this entire thing shook out who uh who all you know, Sam directed donations to indeed whether or not he is, you know, being protected by Democrats for uh whatever. As I think we saw a couple of conspiracy theorists uh suggest after the charge was initially dropped, right party overlooked. Again. Thanks for being with us this morning. That was codus global policy and regulation, managing editor Nick Day.