Lummis & Gallego: SBF Can Take His Pardon Pitch Somewhere Else 🔒

Sens. Rubén Gallego (D-AZ) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) introduced a bipartisan Senate resolution on Wednesday declaring that imprisoned FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried should not receive a presidential pardon, commutation, or other form of federal clemency. Gallego, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Digital Assets, said "Keep him locked up" and argued Bankman-Fried has shown "no remorse" for his crimes. Lummis, the panel's leading Republican and a prominent crypto advocate, said Bankman-Fried had his day in court and is "chasing clemency he hasn't earned" rather than taking accountability. A spokesperson for Lummis's 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."

Bankman-Fried's legal troubles stem from the November 2022 collapse of FTX. A jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict on seven fraud and conspiracy counts in November 2023, and in March 2024 Judge Lewis Kaplan imposed a 25-year sentence and ordered $11 billion in forfeiture. FTX customers alone lost more than $8 billion in what prosecutors described as one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history. The resolution rejects Bankman-Fried's framing of his prosecution as political persecution and affirms the integrity of the jury's verdict.

The measure follows Bankman-Fried's formal petition this month to the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney seeking a "pardon after completion of sentence," which remains pending. Just days earlier, the Second Circuit upheld his conviction and sentence, leaving him ineligible for release until 2044.

President Donald Trump has publicly ruled out clemency for Bankman-Fried, telling the New York Times in January that he had no plans to grant it, even as he used his pardon power in 2025 to clear several other high-profile crypto defendants, including Silk Road's Ross Ulbricht, BitMEX's Arthur Hayes and Ben Delo, and Binance's Changpeng Zhao. The bipartisan resolution signals congressional unease that the door could reopen despite the president's stated position, and reflects prior rebukes of Bankman-Fried, including Lummis's February criticism after SBF's X account began promoting a crypto market-structure bill.