In brief
- The U.S. Senate has unanimously passed a resolution stating that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried should “under no circumstances” receive executive clemency, including a pardon or commutation.
- The bipartisan measure was led by Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Rubén Gallego (D-AZ), the top members of the Banking Committee’s digital assets subcommittee.
- The resolution is symbolic and doesn’t limit the president’s constitutional pardon power; Bankman-Fried, convicted in 2023, isn’t eligible for release until 2044.
The U.S. Senate has unanimously declared that Sam Bankman-Fried should never win clemency, passing a resolution on Wednesday that says the convicted FTX founder should “under no circumstances” receive a pardon or commutation of his 25-year sentence.
The measure, S. Res. 772, passed by unanimous consent—a procedure that clears a resolution as long as not a single senator objects. Alongside its stance on Bankman-Fried, it affirmed the Senate’s commitment to “the rule of law and integrity of the United States financial system.”
As a nonbinding resolution, it carries no legal force, and cannot curb the president’s constitutional power to grant clemency.
A rare bipartisan front
The measure was steered by Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Rubén Gallego (D-AZ), the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee’s digital assets subcommittee, who introduced it on June 17. Lummis, the crypto industry’s most prominent advocate in Congress, said at the time that Bankman-Fried “had his day in court.” Gallego was more blunt, stating, “Keep him locked up.”
At the time, a spokesperson for Lummis’ office told Decrypt that, “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 narrowing path to freedom
The vote lands as Bankman-Fried keeps looking for a way out. He lost his appeal when a federal court upheld his fraud conviction last month, while President Donald Trump said in January that he had no plans to pardon him.
Trump has been willing to extend clemency to other crypto figures—among them Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, BitMEX co-founders Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, and Samuel Reed, and Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht, all of whom he pardoned.
How FTX unraveled
A jury convicted Bankman-Fried in November 2023 on seven counts tied to the 2022 implosion of FTX, once one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison, with prosecutors called it one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history after American customers lost more than $8 billion.
With the courts, the White House, and now the full Senate lining up against him, Bankman-Fried’s options are thinning—leaving his scheduled release, somewhere around 2044, as his likeliest route out.
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