No Mercy, No Commutation, No Pardon: Senate Locks The Cell Door On SBF 🔒

Sens. Rubén Gallego (D-AZ) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) introduced a bipartisan Senate resolution on Wednesday formally opposing any presidential clemency for Sam Bankman-Fried, the convicted FTX founder serving a 25-year federal sentence. The resolution, led by the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Digital Assets, declares that Bankman-Fried "under no circumstances" should receive a pardon, commutation or other form of federal clemency. "Keep him locked up," Gallego said, adding that Bankman-Fried had shown "no remorse." A spokesperson for Lummis said the senator "wants him to know that her and her colleagues think Mr. Fried is right where he belongs."

The resolution is non-binding and does not constrain the president's constitutional pardon power, but it puts Congress on record against clemency and affirms that Bankman-Fried's 25-year sentence "reflects the extraordinary scale and deliberateness of his crimes, his lack of remorse, and the catastrophic harm inflicted upon millions of victims." The measure warns that a pardon would "erase [his] conviction … weaken deterrence, and send a deeply damaging message that perpetrators of large-scale financial fraud can escape permanent accountability." It also rejects Bankman-Fried's portrayal of his prosecution as political persecution and affirms the integrity of the jury's unanimous verdict.

Bankman-Fried was convicted in November 2023 on seven fraud and conspiracy counts tied to the November 2022 collapse of FTX. Judge Lewis Kaplan sentenced him in March 2024 to 25 years in prison and ordered $11 billion in forfeiture, with FTX customers alone losing more than $8 billion. The Second Circuit upheld the conviction and sentence last week, leaving Bankman-Fried ineligible for release until 2044 and narrowing his legal options to a presidential pardon or a US Supreme Court appeal. He formally petitioned the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney earlier this month for a "pardon after completion of sentence," a request that remains pending.

President Donald Trump used his pardon power in 2025 to clear several high-profile crypto figures, including Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road, BitMEX co-founders Arthur Hayes and Ben Delo, and former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao. In a January interview with the New York Times, Trump said he had no plans to grant clemency to Bankman-Fried. Lummis, a leading crypto advocate, said Bankman-Fried was "chasing clemency he hasn't earned" rather than taking accountability.

Several other former FTX and Alameda Research executives have already been sentenced in connection with the case. Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, received a two-year sentence in 2024 and was released in January after 14 months. Former FTX engineering director Nishad Singh and co-founder Gary Wang were each sentenced to time served after testifying against Bankman-Fried at trial. Ryan Salame, co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, was sentenced to 90 months in prison for unlawful political contributions and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business and remains incarcerated.