Does it have any meaning?

Conservative activist Laura Loomer set social media on fire Wednesday with a post claiming there is a “massive and well-heeled” effort underway to persuade President Donald Trump to pardon Sam Bankman Fried, the convicted founder and former CEO of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

This suspicion quickly spread throughout Company X, infuriating partisans who looked for evidence and saw backroom corruption and other conspiracies.

“There is a massive and well-funded lobbying effort underway to get this criminal pardoned,” Loomer wrote in X. “He’s going to act as if he’s a victim of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party after funding all the left-wing campaigns. Don’t be fooled by that.”

Needless to say, this tweet generated a significant amount of comments and retweets. But is it true? While there are glimmers of a real amnesty push, so far there is little to suggest the kind of coordinated campaign Loomer describes.

smoke in the air

In January, bloomberg Bankman-Fried’s parents, Stanford law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Freed, were “exploring ways” to seek a pardon for their son from Trump’s orbit, the report said. A person familiar with the initiative said: WSJ No direct contact with the campaign has been confirmed, but it was serious enough to warrant a strategy memo and the assistance of outside counsel.

Since being sentenced to 25 years in prison and $11 billion in forfeitures, Bankman Fried has been trying to reinvent himself while his appeal is pending.

In a March prison interview with Tucker Carlson, the former cryptocurrency mogul distanced himself from Democratic politics and hinted at sympathies with Republicans who criticize federal prosecutors.

In July, a spike in the price of FTX’s defunct exchange token FTT turned out to be due to a false rumor on social media that President Trump had already signed a pardon for the former FTX president. Although the Justice Department’s pardon record showed nothing of the kind, the episode showed how quickly political calculations can move digital asset markets.

what is missing

No lobbying disclosures:A quick check of the Lobbying Disclosure Act database reveals no companies registered to lobby for the Bankman-Fried pardon or related amnesty efforts. However, experts say that amnesty lobbying often falls into the gray area of ​​information disclosure. Consultants can avoid registration by labeling their work “government relations.”

No formal action: Bankman Fried is not on the Justice Department’s 2025 pardon list. No filings, documents or White House statements indicate the petition has progressed beyond exploratory conversations.

Odds are low, chatter is high: Polymarket bettors are betting on only a 3% chance of him being released from custody in 2025.

Still, anything is possible. After all, President Trump pardoned Arthur Hayes and the co-founders of BitMEX in March, and there has recently been speculation that President Trump is considering pardoning Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Chao.

But for now, evidence of a “large and well-funded” lobbying machine is thin, with more smoke than fire.