New book claims that alleged fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried wanted to pay Trump $5 billion not to run for president

Alleged fraudster and Democratic megadonor Sam Bankman-Fried looked into paying former President Donald Trump not to run for reelection in 2020, according to an excerpt from the upcoming book “Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon” by author Michael Lewis.

Bankman-Fried, who was then the multibillionaire CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, investigated the legality of bribing then-President Trump with money to not run for the presidency again, according to the excerpt obtained by The Washington Post. Lewis claimed that Bankman-Fried’s associates managed to establish a covert communication line with Trump’s camp and found that the then-president could potentially be swayed for $5 billion; it’s unclear who the individuals were, and whether they contacted Trump himself.

“Isn’t Sam Bankman-Fried a liar who has been outed as a fraudster and someone that can’t be trusted,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told Business Insider regarding the report.Moreover, Bankman-Fried also simultaneously intended to contribute between $15 and $30 million to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to beat “Trumpier” candidates in 2020 Senate races, according to the book. He believed that Trump was an “existential threat to humanity,” according to the book excerpt.

Bankman-Fried contributed more than $39 million to support Democrat-aligned causes, and was the second-largest individual contributor to such causes during the 2022 midterm election cycle, according to The Washington Post’s analysis of Federal Election Commission data.

Bankman-Fried is currently confined in a jail in New York City, and his trial will begin this week, according to Reuters. He is slated to face seven charges, including defrauding FTX customers and lenders by masterminding a scheme to divert billions of dollars to fund campaign contributions, donations to charities and real estate acquisitions, according to the NYT.

The disgraced crypto tycoon allegedly “misappropriated and embezzled FTX customer deposits, and used billions of dollars in stolen funds for a variety of purposes, including … to help fund over a hundred million dollars in campaign contributions to Democrats and Republicans to seek to influence cryptocurrency regulation,” according to an August indictment against him.

The Trump campaign and an attorney for Bankman-Fried did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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