Sam Bankman-Fried Thrown Into Solitary Over Tucker Carlson Interview: Report

Tucker Carlson’s interview with disgraced crypto CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, which was distributed online Thursday, gave the impression to be a clear ploy to get media consideration with the objective of in the end scoring a pardon from President Donald Trump. Nevertheless it seems like SBF is now paying a worth for the interview. The previous billionaire has reportedly been tossed into solitary confinement as a result of the interview wasn’t permitted by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, in response to a brand new report from the New York Occasions.

In keeping with the Times, the Bureau of Prisons has strict guidelines about how interviews are performed with inmates, and the federal company confirmed to the newspaper that it didn’t give permission for the interview with Carlson to go ahead. We don’t know when the interview truly befell, although clues counsel it was Wednesday, the day earlier than it was printed on-line to social media platforms like Rumble and X. SBF is at present being held on the Metropolitan Detention Middle in Brooklyn.

It’s additionally not clear what sort of gear was used to permit SBF and Carlson to speak. It’s totally doable SBF merely used a smuggled smartphone to speak with Carlson, and whereas that does seem to be probably the most simple solution to accomplish an interview like this, that’s purely speculative.  SBF steered in his chat with Carlson that he was actually lacking having high-tech gadgets at his disposal, although the subject solely got here up when the previous Fox Information host requested if the crypto govt was beforehand on stimulants earlier than he entered jail. SBF blamed his erratic look in outdated interviews on being distracted by tech gadgets. Carlson took the chance to say that tech wasn’t wholesome.

The brand new report from the New York Occasions appears to substantiate what anybody with slightly little bit of widespread sense assumed when Carlson’s interview dropped: SBF, who’s at present serving a 25-year sentence for fraud after his crypto firm FTX collapsed in 2022, is angling for a pardon from President Trump.

Bankman-Fried’s mother and father, Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried, are two regulation professors at Stanford and are reportedly consulting with Kory Langhofer, an Arizona lawyer who beforehand labored on Trump’s presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020, in response to the Occasions. Langhofer would presumably have deep connections in Trump World, however the newspaper experiences they haven’t had direct contact with Trump. A minimum of, not but.

Nevertheless it looks as if it might be an uphill climb for SBF and his household to get a pardon from Trump. The Occasions says the trouble “doesn’t seem to have gained traction,” and it’s straightforward to guess that SBF’s outdated associations with high-profile Democrats could also be hurting his possibilities. Nonetheless, SBF himself admitted as soon as he was in jail that he was additionally secretly donating to Republicans earlier than the implosion of FTX.

SBF mentioned within the Thursday episode of Carlson’s present that he doesn’t imagine Democrats “saved” him whereas being prosecuted in the course of the Joe Biden years as a result of they knew he was giving to Republicans as nicely. Carlson stored performing all through the interview as if it’s simply regular and cheap for rich individuals who donate to politicians to anticipate corrupt favors from those self same individuals of their time of want. However SBF didn’t actually take the bait, saying that it might have been “inappropriate” to ask for assist.

Trump not too long ago pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the Silk Highway founder convicted in 2015 who was serving a 40-year sentence for cash laundering, amongst a number of different fees associated to the darknet website. Ulbricht’s pardon was truly a marketing campaign promise made by Trump within the lead as much as the election, largely seen as a favor to the crypto group, which considers Ulbricht a hero.

Bankman-Fried by no means explicitly requested for a pardon from Trump throughout his interview both, and it appears fairly clear at this level that regardless of how determined he’s to get out of jail, he’s going to let issues occur behind the scenes quite than go begging. However who is aware of what would possibly occur sooner or later. SBF turned 33 on Thursday and has solely served a few years of a 25-year sentence.