Dems promised to return donations from Sam Bankman-Fried, but haven’t: Report

(WND) Sam Bankman-Fried is the disgraced crypto mogul who still faces a long list of charges from his failed FTX.

The company imploded when Bankman-Fried “scrambled to use customer funds to cover losses,” according to reports. It plunged from being a $32 billion operation to being a debtor in Chapter 11.

While flying high before the collapse, SBF, as he is known, contributed “more than $40 million to political candidates and committees,” mostly Democrats, to “improve his personal standing” in Washington, prosecutors have charged, says a report in the Washington Free Beacon.

That report notes that several Democrats, when the catastrophe developed, promised to return those donations.

But they haven’t.

The report said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., who said in December she’d donate the $26,600 SBF gave her to charity.

“But campaign filings do not list any such payments, nor do they show refunds to Bankman-Fried, or payments to the government relief fund for victims of Bankman-Fried’s alleged fraud,” the report said.

There’s also Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., who “said in January she would return contributions from Bankman-Fried,” the report said.

“Hassan’s campaign last month gave $5,800 of the funds from Bankman-Fried to a victim fund set up by the U.S. Marshals Service. But Hassan appears to have held onto the $20,800 that Bankman-Fried gave the Maggie Hassan Victory Fund. The fund helps raise money for Hassan’s campaign and her political action committee, Granite Values PAC,” the report explained.

His donations did achieve some results, the report said, noting he gave $5 million in 2020 to a PAC supporting Joe Biden, and he ended up with a meeting with top white House officials.

Stabenow also “drafted Bankman-Fried-backed legislation that would put the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in charge of regulating the crypto industry, instead of the much larger Securities and Exchange Commission,” the report said.

Some lawmakers who took SBF money said it would be given to charity, some refunded the donations and others said they would keep the money until directed by federal prosecutors, who now have said it should be turned over to the government to reimburse victims.

The report continued, “Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., another top recipient of Bankman-Fried cash, donated his $5,800 in campaign contributions to charity. A spokesman for Gillibrand says she ‘no longer has’ a $10,800 contribution that Bankman-Fried gave the Gillibrand Victory Fund.”

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