Sam Bankman-Fried’s Mom Is Posting From His Substack. Why?

On Tuesday, as an attorney for Sam Bankman-Fried argued with a judge considering his appeal, an email landed in the inboxes of those who subscribed to the disgraced crypto mogul’s Substack.

The email was from Bankman-Fried’s mother, Barbara, a Stanford Law professor. So there was no confusion, she wrote, “Just to confirm for those asking: yes, the post below was written by Barbara Fried.”

Attached was a 65-page report, written by Fried, which made an aggressive case in defense of her son, who was charged in 2023 with defrauding customers of his crypto exchange FTX out of billions of dollars. The erstwhile billionaire was convicted on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

It’s a sentence Bankman-Fried’s lawyers are appealing in federal court this week. Oral arguments began on Tuesday, with his lawyer Alexandra Shapiro reportedly making the case that his first trial was “fundamentally unfair.” She put forth a similar argument to Bankman-Fried’s mother: that FTX collapsed as a result of a liquidity crisis, not fraud.

Judges in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – where, in a neat coincidence, Bankman-Fried’s mother once clerked – were reportedly skeptical of his lawyer’s arguments. “From my reading of the record, [there was] very substantial evidence of guilt,” one of the judges told Shapiro. The other two judges on the panel reportedly shared in that skepticism.

Should Bankman-Fried lose his appeal, which seems likely given the high burden in such cases, there is another well-trodden path out of federal prison: a pardon.

President Donald Trump has, in just his first year back in office, proven to be perhaps the most unrestrained pardoner in modern presidential history, with a particular focus on white collar criminals. Those to whom he has tossed salvation include Silk Road creator Russ Ulbricht, Ozy Media fraudster Carlos Watson, and another criminal cryptobillionaire, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao.

So it may not be that far-fetched that Bankman-Fried, despite his past life as a Democratic megadonor, would nab a coveted get-out-of-jail-free card from Trump. He’s been making the rounds. Bankman-Fried sat for a jailhouse interview with Tucker Carlson in March, during which he put forth some subtle MAGA-signalling. “In 2020, I was center-left and I gave to Biden’s campaign. I was optimistic he would be a center-left president,” he told Carlson. “I spent the next few years in D.C. a lot. I was really really shocked by what I saw there… and not in a good direction.” He added: “By late 2022 I was giving to Republicans as much as Democrats.”