Maxine Waters (D-CA), the Chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, sparked serious concern this past Friday in the wake of politely requesting the former FTX CEO and alleged fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried to take part in a hearing hosted by legislators.
Recently, bankruptcy had been filed by FTX after a large number of its users found out that the trading form Alameda Research, which is a group headed up by Bankman-Fried love interest Caroline Ellison, had allegedly been utilizing money from FTX to gamble and place other bets. Though the heavily discouraged businessman may have ended up losing multiple billions of dollars in clients’ funds, Waters expressed to Bankman-Fried via social media that “we appreciate that you’ve been candid in your discussions about what happened” with FTX.
“Your willingness to talk to the public will help the company’s customers, investors, and others,” she stated, highlighting that the members of the House Financial Services Committee would just “welcome your participation” for the hearing, which is currently slated to take place on the 13th of December.
As the son of a pair of Stanford Law professors with longstanding connections to the4 Democratic Party, Bankman-Fried came to the limelight as a success roughly three years ago. Recently, he donated well over $39 million throughout the most recent midterm elections, with the vast majority of those funds helping Democratic candidates, as explained by data from Open Secrets. Throughout the most recent presidential election cycle, he was the Biden campaign’s second-largest contributor.
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) highlighted the various campaign contributions from the sudden billionaire in a response to Waters. “So polite and accommodating,” he posted via social media alongside a picture of Bankman-Fried and the lawmaker posing for cameras. “See how differently Democrats treat their donors?”
Benny Johnson, a podcast host and anchor for Newsmax, highlighted footage of Waters appearing to blow a kiss at Bankman-Friend throughout a previous hearing. “She’s the one who’s supposed to grill SBF next month?” he stated.
As a columnist for The Hill, Joe Concha highlighted that the “polite” nature of the message was entirely asinine and akin to stating, “We appreciate that you’ve been candid in your discussions around destroying the lives of thousands of your investors while hiding out in your $40 million penthouse in the Bahamas that said investors paid for.”
Recently, Andrew Ross Sorkin, a financial columnist with the New York Times, took part in an interview with the young CEo at the outlet’s recent DealBook Summit despite extreme criticism for failing to cancel the conversation.
In the wake of Sorkin pushing him about the alleged intermingling of money between his two companies, Bankman-Friend stated that a “failure of oversight” from his camp ended up causing confusion instead of any need to defraud investors for his own gain. “I wasn’t running Alameda. I didn’t know exactly what was going on,” stated Bankman-Friend. “I was nervous because of the conflict of interest of being too involved.”
