Guest Post by Jeffrey Tucker
The Justice Department has dismissed all charges related to campaign finance leveled against Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder and CEO of the Bahamas-based crypto exchange FTX. The grounds were a bit unusual. Officials in the Bahamas said that such charges were not the basis of the extradition. “The Bahamas did not intend to extradite the defendant on the campaign contributions count,” said the Justice Department. “Accordingly, in keeping with its treaty obligations to the Bahamas, the Government does not intend to proceed to trial on the campaign contributions count.”
And just like that, charges are gone. What’s strange is that this claim jumps out in the financial trail of FTX. Indeed, it seems obvious. It was an impressive caper. FTX said it practiced “effective altruism” and so intended to give away $1 billion to charity. It raised venture funding from many sources that wanted to pay off politicians but were restricted from doing so by law. FTX classified this as investment and then altruistically gave money to many charities involved in “pandemic planning” but many were not real charities. They were 501c4s that fund political campaigns. With just a few hops in the money trail, this mechanism allowed vast funding of mostly Democratic political interests in advance of the 2020 election.
Continue reading “The Money Trails of the Pandemic Planning Racket”