Bribers With No Bribees???
My interest in cryptocurrency is minimal; I followed the Sam Bankman Fried case so closely because of the political corruption. He masterminded the purchase of scores of American politicians— both parties— using over $100 million in funds stolen from the pigeons who thought they were investing. And the question I pondered incessantly was about how the Justice system thought it could prosecute a briber without prosecuting those who took the bribes. Bankman Fried and his FTX cronies had an labyrinth of SuperPACs funneling immense rums of money to crooked politicians order to make sure there would never be any effective oversight of the crypto industry. I asked Google’s Bard which crooked politicians took the most in bribes from the biggest-spending SuperPACs and although Bard is a notorious liar, it at least picked out some of the worst offenders:
Those numbers Bard came up with are wildly inflated— unless Bard knows something I don’t— but those politicians are certainly among the worst offenders, particularly Emmer (leader of the Blockchain 8), who is still preventing effective oversight of the industry. Other crooks not on those lists include Katie Britt (R-AL), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Pete Aguilar (D-CA), Ted Budd (R-NC), Warren Davidson (R-OH), Maxwell Frost (D-FL), Sean Casten (D-IL), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Byron Donalds (R-FL), Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Shontel Brown (D-OH), George Santos (R-NY), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Rob Menendez Jr. (D-NJ), John Boozman (R-AR), Darren Soto (D-FL)... Watch Tom Emmer (R-MN) earn the stolen money he got from FTX that he used to buy his position in House leadership:
Anyway, the Department of Justice has disgraced itself by brazenly deciding to not pursue charges against any of the crooked politicians. There will be no second Bankman Fried trial to get to the bottom of the political bribery. Surprised? How soon before he’s suicided in his cell? How about this for a sack of reeking bullshit: “Prosecutors said in a letter filed in a New York court on Friday that pursuing a second trial for the disgraced tycoon would only serve to delay the case against him, which is already strong enough. ‘Given that practical reality, and the strong public interest in a prompt resolution of this matter, the Government intends to proceed to sentencing on the counts for which the defendant was convicted at trial,’ prosecutors said in the letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over Bankman-Fried’s first criminal trial last year.” What about nearly 200 members of Congress he had in his pocket? And where's the media on this? How smart was SBF to give bipartisanly! No one is incentivized to get to the bottom on the orgy of bribes this way... except outliers like Tennessee MAGA crackpot Tim Burchett (who no one poays any attention to anyway):
More people-- over 9 million-- paid attention to this tweet that other day... but it's not going to matter anyway, is it? Too many political careers at stake.
