Democrats like to show their anger over the role “dark money” plays in the political process. The dark-money system, as they argue, lets anonymous donors influence elections in a way that isn't fair, and this type of money ought to be outlawed. (They obviously take in huge sums of money from dark-money sources each election season, but that's a topic to return to later.) If they dislike dark money as much as “wink, wink” they claim, they ought to be horrified by the scandalous funding of the 2022 election from the not-so-secret source of crypto-fraud Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX infamy.
A brief overview of the stunning decline of FTX and its founder, thanks to RedState‘s Jennifer Oliver O'Connell: “According to Reuters’ sources, they claim that at least $1 billion of customer funds have vanished from individual accounts, reportedly triggered through a ‘backdoor’ housed in the finance software.”
And this: “According to Influence Watch, Bankman-Fried gave approximately $5.2 million to Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. Bankman’s mother is a Stanford professor and founder of the Silicon Valley PAC Mind the Gap, which supports Democrat candidates.”
This also: “Bankman-Fried said in a podcast that he had plans to pour at least $100 million into the 2024 presidential campaign, and potentially even more, should former President Donald J. Trump declare his candidacy.”
Regarding the Trump part, there's a very troubling informational tidbit from Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel. “On the balance sheet of FTX is a line called ‘Trump Lose.'”
Could this be crucial data to consider when analyzing the whole picture of FTX's collapse? There have been some who suggest FTX was nothing more than the creation of a Democrat Party slush fund, and Bankman-Fried was awed by his position as the second-largest Democrat funder during the 2022 election cycle (behind George Soros). The fund certainly gave access to the top levels of the party, as White House log books and images of him in the White House rubbing shoulders with Bill Clinton demonstrate. And the grift continues.
Given the criminal character of the donations’ genesis, should the oh-so-principled Democrats return the dirty money to FTX's investors?
Fox News contributor Miranda Devine, a recent guest on “Fox & Friends,” said that the Democrats greatly benefited from Bankman-Fried's fraud: “And the Democrats, with their $40 million that they got at least this cycle to win the midterms, plus the $10 million that this guy put into Biden's campaign in 2020, they really owe it to the victims of this scam to give it back,” she said, noting Bankman-Fried was at the White House several times this year.
What exactly did Bankman-Fried receive in exchange for his $50 million (and the subsequent promise to donate $1 billion by 2024)? According to Devine, he “was behind a whole lot of legislation that was being drafted that was supposedly going to regulate crypto, but keep the SEC out of it.” Oh.
FTX and Bankman-Fried could also have links to the conflict in Ukraine. There are some who suggest that some of the money from FTX was used to fund Ukraine.
Also from Fox News:
His company also reportedly set up a website, Aid for Ukraine, to raise funds for Ukrainians amid the ongoing war against Russia. The initiative was powered by the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, FTX and Ukrainian-web company Everstake.
Cryptocurrency donations were sent to the National Bank of Ukraine. The 30-year-old crypto financier wrote on Twitter in early March that he was “excited and humbled to be working with the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance and others to support crypto donations to Ukraine.”
Confused?
The evidence is mounting that Sam Bankman-Fried was the perpetrator of an international crypto fraud that stole a lot of people's money but increased the wealth of the Democrat Party. It's a dirty scheme, the gains of which ought to be returned to FTX investors. However, will that actually be the case? It's unlikely. Democrats are used to not having to answer for their actions. Maybe the newly elected Republican-led House could initiate an investigation?
