Of Course They Won't

Prosecutors have ended their prosecution of Sam Bankman-Fried for (among other things) campaign finance violations.

They are basically saying that it is not necessary.

I think that the reality is that there are far too many people, on both sides of the political aisle, who would be implicated, and the prosecutors decided that this would not be worth it:

US prosecutors say they do not plan to conduct a second trial against Sam Bankman-Fried, who was convicted last month of stealing from customers of his now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange.

In a letter filed on Friday night in federal court in Manhattan, prosecutors said the “strong public interest” in a prompt resolution of their case against the 31-year-old former billionaire outweighed the benefits of a second trial.

Prosecutors said that interest “weighs particularly heavily here”, given that Bankman-Fried’s scheduled sentencing on 28 March 2024 is likely to include orders of forfeiture and restitution for victims of his crimes.

Jurors convicted Bankman-Fried on 2 November on all seven fraud and conspiracy counts he faced. Prosecutors had accused him of looting $8bn from FTX customers out of sheer greed.

………

Bankman-Fried had faced six additional charges that had been severed from his first trial, including campaign finance violations, conspiracy to commit bribery and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.

He had been extradited in December 2022 from the Bahamas, where FTX was based, to face the seven earlier charges.

The Bahamas, however, had yet to grant its consent for a trial on the remaining charges, leaving the timetable uncertain, prosecutors said.

Unless I miss my guess, the Bahamas is reticent about granting consent because they fear that the beneficiaries of SBF's donations, which include people such as Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell, might use their power to retaliate against them,

I do hope that the prosecutions are restarted after sentencing, not because SBF deserves more jail time, though he probably does, but because we need to turn over the rocks in our political system, and following the money will do just that.