FTX CEO Confirms He’s Investigating Bankman-Fried’s Politically Connected Progressive Parents
By Caroline Downey
December 13, 2022 1:34 PM
Testifying before the House Financial Services Committee Tuesday morning, the newly appointed CEO of FTX revealed that he is investigating the role that disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents played in the cryptocurrency exchange’s recent implosion.
CEO John Ray was asked by Republican Representative Bill Huizenga whether Bankman-Fried’s parents, both of whom are professors at Stanford Law School, had advised their son or been employed by his firm in any capacity.
“We indicated that Mr. Bankman had given legal advice. He received payments…the family certainly received payments,” Ray testified, adding that “we’re investigating” the role the pair played in the fraudulent business.
The congressman noted that when Bankman-Fried met with him in Washington, D.C., on December 8 of last year, he was 15 minutes late and was accompanied by his father, who teaches a course on tax law at Stanford. Bankman-Fried’s mother Barbara, meanwhile, cultivated extensive progressive political connections through her Democratic PAC Mind the Gap, which routed millions of dollars from Silicon Valley donors to Democratic campaigns, pledging to spend as much as $140 million in the 2020 election cycle.
The group reportedly attracted wealthy donors by pledging to use statistical modeling to effectively leverage their contributions to elect the maximum number of candidates, an approach one donor called “the moneyball of politics,” according to an expose in Vox. Major donors include Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and a host of other Silicon Valley heavy-hitters, including Human Rights Watch co-chairwoman Amy Rao.
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