{"id":100157,"date":"2026-06-09T22:03:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T22:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=100157"},"modified":"2026-06-09T22:03:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T22:03:07","slug":"sam-bankman-frieds-cellmate-says-he-never-owned-up-and-thats-why-a-pardon-wont-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=100157","title":{"rendered":"Sam Bankman-Fried\u2019s Cellmate Says He Never Owned Up \u2014 And That\u2019s Why A Pardon Won\u2019t Come"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Sam Bankman-Fried says he would \u201cabsolutely\u201d welcome a pardon<\/a> from US President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Trump, for his part, has already said no.<\/p>\n

Cellmate Speaks Up<\/h2>\n

Michael Avenatti, who shared a prison unit with the former FTX chief, went further than Trump\u2019s January dismissal. In a series of posts on X, Avenatti said SBF never once admitted any wrongdoing during their time together \u2014 not privately, not in passing, not ever.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cNot once did he admit he\u2019d done anything wrong,\u201d Avenatti wrote, adding that redemption begins with accepting responsibility. Without that, he argued, a pardon request carries no real weight.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Avenatti is no neutral observer. He is himself a convicted felon, currently incarcerated for extortion and fraud. His criticism of SBF\u2019s character comes from someone with his own considerable legal baggage.<\/p>\n

\n

Sam Bankman-Fried and I were prison bunkmates and I know him well. So I read this with more context than most.<\/p>\n

Sam and I argued more than once about the same thing: his refusal to accept ANY responsibility for what he did. Not once did he admit he\u2019d done anything wrong \u2014 even\u2026 https:\/\/t.co\/7FHJelX1gx<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) June 8, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Still, Avenatti did not write off Bankman-Fried entirely. He described the former crypto executive as a technology visionary with genuine intellectual gifts. The problem, in his telling, was not SBF\u2019s intelligence \u2014 it was his judgment about his own limits.<\/p>\n

\n

FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried formally applied for a presidential pardon https:\/\/t.co\/GB3lcL9A0p<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Bloomberg (@business) June 8, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Leadership Question<\/h2>\n

Avenatti drew a pointed comparison to Google. When Larry Page and Sergey Brin built their company, they eventually brought in Eric Schmidt, an experienced executive, to help run it. They recognized what they didn\u2019t know. Bankman-Fried, Avenatti argued, never made that call.<\/p>\n

Had SBF hired \u201can actual adult in the room\u201d and listened to people with real operational experience, Avenatti said, FTX might never have collapsed. He put a number on it: SBF could today be worth close to $100 billion and still be a free man.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

That argument sits awkwardly alongside the legal record. SBF is currently serving a 25-year sentence for his role in the FTX collapse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His conviction centered on the commingling of customer funds \u2014 a finding he continues to dispute. He has maintained that FTX customers were ultimately repaid, a claim critics reject as a distortion of the full picture.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s Position On The Record<\/p>\n

Trump has already weighed in on this publicly. In January, he told The New York Times he has no intention of granting SBF clemency<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During his second term, Trump has issued more than 1,400 pardons and commutations \u2014 over 1,200 of them tied to the January 6 cases alone.<\/p>\n

SBF<\/a> has not appeared on any list of people under consideration.<\/p>\n

Featured image from Aaron Schwartz\/Sipa USA\/Alamy, chart from TradingView<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sam Bankman-Fried says he would \u201cabsolutely\u201d welcome a pardon from US President Donald Trump. Trump, for his part, has already said no. Cellmate Speaks Up Michael Avenatti, who shared a prison unit with the former FTX chief, went further than Trump\u2019s January dismissal. In a series of posts on X, Avenatti said SBF never once […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-100157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}