Sam Bankman Fried
disambig SEE FTX
SEEKS PARDON TRUMP SCOTUS
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AN 10 26
OMG DOH
President Donald Trump adores felons with bottomless pockets, and now one of the tech industries most infamous felons is almost through the ribbon, reports Gizmodo.
“Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder about three years into a 25-year prison sentence for around $11 billion in fraud against FTX customers, investors, and lenders, presumably thinks the amount of time he’s served so far should just about square the bill,” said Gizmodo.
“In a prison interview with The Economist’s “Money Talks podcast,” Bankman-Fried continued to insist on his innocence even as his lawyers argue the $11 billion forfeiture in the case (an amount basically equal to what he stole) should be thrown out on constitutional grounds.”
The BBC reported in June that Bankman-Fried’s lawyers were seeking a pardon from President Donald Trump. But now they are pursuing a petition before the Supreme Court while chasing Trump’s generosity.
“Donald Trump, … uses pardons as patronage and is happy to hand them out to other powerful men who claim to be victims of partisan lawfare,” reports Gizmodo. “Last year, Bankman-Fried began praising Trump’s wisdom on pardons on X, writing that ‘President Trump knows that, when you weaponize the DOJ, you start putting innocent people in prison.’
“Getting a pardon is “an uphill battle,” Bankman-Fried told Money Talks. “All I can do is put forward, you know, the truth as I see it, and hope that parties are more reflective, and that there’s less visceral reaction than there was before.”
But Gizmodo said that “The visceral reaction Bankman-Fried is referring to” is likely a U.S. Senate resolution to Trump urging the president not to pardon him—which was passed without opposition.
“For the record, Bankman-Fried’s transfer of $8 billion from FTX to his crypto trading firm, Alameda Research, was fraud," assures Gizmodo. “It was not normal margin trading, and his lawyers have already lost one appeal predicated on a similar argument.
Bankman-Fried told Economist hosts that FTX was “a legitimate and successful business,” but suffered a “run on the bank, which is a thing that happens with margin businesses. But Gizmodo writes that his supposed “run” came after FTX was already insolvent and Bankman-Fried had padded Alameda’s balance sheet with FTT, a worthless trade token that FTX cooked up itself.
“About the only thing this interview is effective evidence for is the thesis that money poisoning causes permanent brain damage,” added Gizmodo writer Tom McKay.
Meanwhile, critics like DOJ's former pardon attorney Liz Oyer, accuse have condemned Trump's approach to the clemency process and accuse him of abusing his Article II powers. Oyer and others claim Trump is using the "unfettered executive power" to grant pardons in a way that has served to "degrade, corrupt and politicize the justice system.
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REV DR PJT 9 26 JEFF MENTION
SVB AND SBF COULD HAVE ENDED CRYPTO INDUSTRY, INSTEAD TOOK AUT SHERROD
The (Democratic) AI Lobby | Jeff Hauser | TMR
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Friday, January 21, 2022
Billionaires Play Big Role in Funding of New Think Tank Institute for Progress (IFP)
Get ready to learn another think think tank acronym: IFP. It stands for Institute for Progress, a new Washington, DC-based think tank that has been launched by Caleb Watney and Alec Stapp.
Its mission is to "accelerate scientific, technological, and industrial progress while safeguarding humanity's future." The founders say they will spend most of their initial attention on three key areas: 1) Metascience, 2) Immigration, and 3) Biosecurity.
Mr. Watney, the Co-CEO, was the director for innovation policy at the think tank Progressive Policy Institute (PPI). Before that, he worked as a technology policy fellow at the R Street Institute and as a graduate research fellow at the Mercatus Center.
Mr. Stapp, the other Co-CEO, was the director of technology policy at PPI, a research fellow at the International Center for Law and Economics, a technology policy fellow at the Niskanen Center, and a graduate research fellow at the Mercatus Center.
Scholars at the think tank include senior biosecurity fellow Nikki Teran, who previously worked with the Committee on International Security and Arms Control at the National Academy of Science, the Council on Strategic Risks, and the Open Philanthropy Project. Another scholar is senior immigration fellow Jeremy Neufeld, who previously worked at the Niskanen Center.
There are currently three external board members: Tamara Winter, who formerly worked at the Charter Cities Institute and the Mercacuts Center; Dan Correa, a former Obama Administration official who was CEO of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and worked at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute as well as the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF); and Zachary Graves, a visiting fellow at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School who formerly worked at the Cato Institute and R Street Institute.
IFP, whose new website can be found here, only accepts funding from individuals and foundations. It is currently funded with the support of Open Philanthropy, Emergent Ventures, Patrick Collison, John Collison, and Sam Bankman-Fried.
Facebook co-founder Dustin Muskowitz and wife Cari Tuna are the main funders of Open Philanthropy, an entity which supports numerous think tanks. George Mason University's Mercatus Center houses Emergent Ventures, a fellowship and grant program which was launched with a $1 million grant from the Thiel Foundation. That foundation was created and funded by billionaire Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and early investor in Facebook.
Patrick Collison and his brother John Collison are Irish billionaires who co-founded online payment processor Stripe. Sam Bankman-Fried, another billionaire, is the founder and CEO of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange.
The IFP founders note that Tyler Cowen, head of the Mercatus Center, played a big role in their thinking.
IFP joins a crowded field of policy shops in Washington, which has more than 400 think tanks large and small.
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