In brief
- Sens. Rubén Gallego (D-AZ) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)—the leaders of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Digital Assets—have introduced a resolution opposing any presidential pardon or commutation for Sam Bankman-Fried.
- The non-binding measure casts the FTX founder as an unrepentant fraudster and rejects his claim that the prosecution was political persecution.
- It follows SBF’s formal pardon petition this month and comes despite President Trump ruling out clemency.
A bipartisan pair of senators is moving to put Congress on record against any clemency for Sam Bankman-Fried, as the imprisoned FTX founder presses a long-shot bid for a presidential pardon.
On Wednesday, Sens. Rubén Gallego (D-AZ) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)—the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Digital Assets—introduced a resolution declaring that the convicted crypto fraudster should not receive a pardon, commutation, or other federal clemency. “Keep him locked up,” Gallego said.
Bankman-Fried had shown “no remorse” for his crimes, Gallego added. Lummis, a leading crypto advocate, was just as pointed, saying Bankman-Fried had had his day in court and was “chasing clemency he hasn’t earned” rather than taking accountability.
“SBF has clearly ramped up his pardon campaign and Senator Lummis wants Fried to know she and her colleagues think he’s right where he belongs,” a spokesperson for the senator’s office told Decrypt.
SBF and the FTX collapse
Bankman-Fried’s downfall came about following the collapse of FTX in November 2022, with a jury returning a unanimous guilty verdict on seven fraud and conspiracy counts in November 2023, followed by a 25-year sentence and $11 billion forfeiture ordered by Judge Lewis Kaplan in March 2024.
FTX customers alone lost more than $8 billion in what prosecutors ranked among the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history. The resolution rejects Bankman-Fried’s portrayal of his prosecution as political persecution and affirms the integrity of the jury’s verdict.
Bankman-Fried’s pardon bid
The intervention by the Senators comes after SBF formally petitioned the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney this month for a “pardon after completion of sentence,” a request that remains pending. Just days earlier, the Second Circuit upheld his conviction and sentence, leaving him ineligible for release until 2044.
President Trump has ruled out clemency for Bankman-Fried, telling the New York Times in January he had no plans to grant it. Even so, the resolution reflects unease that the door could reopen, with Trump having pardoned other crypto figures including Silk Road’s Ross Ulbricht, BitMEX’s Arthur Hayes and Ben Delo, and Binance’s Changpeng Zhao.
Bankman-Fried has spent his imprisonment maintaining his innocence and lobbying for relief—drawing bipartisan rebukes before, including from Lummis in February when SBF’s X account began promoting a crypto market-structure bill. Prediction markets still put the odds of a pardon in the single digits.
