Posted on 12/24/2022 8:54:21 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Sam Bankman-Fried, the man at the center of the FTX scandal, is back on US soil after having been extradited from the Bahamas to face federal charges. Naturally, because our justice system is about as coherent as a two-year-old quoting Shakespeare, the notorious fraudster was immediately granted bail and is now spending the holidays with his family. The American oligarchy is alive and well.
But I digress, there’s a lot more to the FTX scandal than just Bankman-Fried’s fate, and one of the more interesting aspects of the entire ordeal is just how close many Democrats were to him. In fact, according to Politico, a Democrat operative and close advisor to Bankman-Fried named Sean McElwee had a direct backchannel setup with the White House.
Sean McElwee had a Slack channel at DataForProgress “that became a rolling convo between McElwee, Biden Admin officials, & some well-known reporters” & “the day after FTX filed for bankruptcy & SBF resigned as CEO, McElwee abruptly shuttered the channel.”
https://t.co/dufXMNGCty pic.twitter.com/O2ZXi5iZrx— Jerry Christmas 🎅🏼🎄 (@JerryDunleavy) December 22, 2022
That slack channel, which reportedly contained ongoing conversations between McElwee and administration officials (as well as “well-known reporters”) was promptly shut down when Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO. Moreover, McElwee is also a co-founder of Data for Progress and only began negotiating his exit from the organization after FTX collapsed in on itself. If everything was above board, then why would Data for Progress feel the need to cut ties so quickly?
To say there are a lot of red flags with this situation is to understate things dramatically, and the questions surrounding the administration’s involvement become obvious with this news. What exactly was McElwee, operating as an advisor to Bankman-Fried, passing along to the White House? What exactly was the White House telling McElwee? Were they coordinating donations? Discussing messaging? Trading favors and influence? Or was there something even more sinister going on?
So far, Democrats have done their best to distance themselves from the man who was their second-largest donor in 2022, but these relationships aren’t going away just because the mainstream press ignores them. Having a secret backchannel with the White House is a big deal, and people deserve to know what their government was doing coordinating with a scam artist like Bankman-Fried.
Imagine for a moment that a Republican president had a secret backchannel set up with a major donor that is now being charged with fraud, among other crimes. Does anyone doubt it’d lead every newscast for weeks on end? Heck, I’m pretty sure there’d be a special counsel.
Bankman-Fried was influencing Democrats at the highest levels of government, using his cash to purchase access. Worse, the Biden administration was happily giving it to him. How deep does Joe Biden’s involvement go? Was he aware of the slack channel? What promises did he make in exchange for Bankman-Fried throwing his cash around?
There needs to be a serious investigation done into all this. The DOJ isn’t going to look into it given it is beholden to Biden. But with the GOP about to take over the House in January, they do have the means to form a select committee. They should do so and then they should dig deep into the relationships and connections between Bankman-Fried and Democrat politicians. This has the potential to be the biggest scandal in decades. Keep the pressure on.
They're crooks. They have amputated their consciences.
If you scratched beneath the surface of any of them, you would find a mutated kind of Hunter Biden addict. If it isn't drugs, it's alcohol. If it isn't alcohol, it's sex or money.
They all have a hunger that cannot be satiated.
The best part was the ‘very convenient’ indictment by the Justice Department, just before he was to testify to Congress.
It could be interesting next month. If the Republicans put in a Speaker who is NOT McCarthy, they may still compel Fried to testify...and then you have a power struggle - Congress wanting him to testify, against DOJ, whose job is to assist in his defense.
Thanks.
BKMK
This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who knows Biden. He is a woefully corrupt bully and narcissist (hair plugs, capped teeth, perma tan like Boehner). And our idiot AG Garland won’t lift a finger.
DOJ will get a “settlement” out of/with SBF and get a friendly judge to seal the records.
No trial possible....perp will (probably) not be available
Having a secret backchannel with the White House.
The DOJ isn’t going to look into it given it is beholden to Biden.
This country has never seen a more corrupt administration then than Biden’s.
When does the revolution start. That’s all that’s left. The soap box, jury box, voting box are all dead. We no longer have fair and free elections. Trump was right, the system is rigged.
Wanna bet?
biden is as dirty as a pig in the mud
I liked what I heard from Gowdy. Now remind me, what exactly did he accomplish?
L
What could he accomplish without a Justice Department?
Legislatures can’t perform executive functions.
We haven’t had a working DOJ in 13+ years now!
Yeah, the GOP will bluster a bit and the media will continue to ignore the issue. Legal think-tanks will wrap themselves into a pretzel explaining how this is totally legal and in no way violates anyone’s rights. Straw-men will be placed front and center as they gas-light the voters by exclaiming, “Of course, the government wanted to make sure no one was spreading ‘mis-information’”.
Howdy was still in the minority party while in Charge congress. However, he is now free to tell us more about what he saw or heard while in office. That is important because he came do early verifications/analysis of the early Deep Swamp attack on Trump and the GOP, and conservatives as well.
He would have been a good SharePoint if he had been in a GOP congress back then.
There us a lot of information that never reaches the public but is selectively given out to journalists such as myself while not violations my secrecy laws. This helps us to get a better background view on what we reported and a better context..
We had to do our own digging and you’d be surprised what we often to found when pointed in the right direction.
In Vietnam, I was in the reverse position because of both historical information I got from conversations with an older Viet Minh general and high ranking NVA/VC field commanders defectors.
One item they said led to our intelligence guys to go further into areas they hadn’t know about and uncovered information about Hanoi/probable Red Chinese heroin smuggling operations into So. Vietnam, where heroin in Sagion in the Fall of 1970 was around 90% pure, something that field labs in Laos couldn’t reach. As far as I now, this information is still classified.
I had to back away from any further research on the story so as to not jeopardize any Intel ops into it. Nice to have high, trusting friends in key places.
Maybe this will come out in future drug production/smuggling investigations now that the House committees are under GOP control and have subpoena/contempt of Congress powers.
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