Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX, has allegedly been moved to solitary confinement. This development follows his unapproved interview with conservative political commentator, Tucker Carlson, a move that has seemingly irked prison authorities.
“The said interview was not sanctioned,” a spokesperson for the US Bureau of Prisons communicated to The New York Times on March 7.
A source familiar with the matter disclosed that Bankman-Fried was relocated to solitary confinement in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn after the Carlson interview was made public. This is where he has been detained since August 2023. The Bureau of Prisons reportedly has stringent regulations regarding inmate communication.
The contentious interview, posted on Carlson’s YouTube channel on March 6, has already amassed over 730,000 views at the time of writing. Bankman-Fried, in his chat with Carlson, shared insights into his prison life and his perspectives on cryptocurrency regulation in the US. Expressing his feelings, he told Carlson that he didn’t perceive himself as “a criminal.”
While Trump’s pardon was not directly broached by Carlson, the ex-FTX CEO seemed open to Republican ideologies during their conversation. This has sparked rumors of a potential Trump pardon for Bankman-Fried. Cryptocurrency predictions platform Polymarket reported on March 7 that, “the likelihood of a pardon for SBF has almost doubled” since the interview aired.
Interestingly, Trump had pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the Silk Road founder, who had been in jail for 12 years, just a day after his inauguration on Jan. 21. Meanwhile, in September 2024, Bankman-Fried’s legal team lodged an appeal against his seven felony charges and 25-year prison sentence. They argued in the 102-page brief that the ex-FTX CEO was “never presumed innocent,” leading to alleged bias from the prosecutors, the presiding judge, and media coverage.
