In November, the cryptocurrency markets took a major hit when FTX (short for “Futures Exchange”) and its many connected companies took a nose dive, filed for bankruptcies, and the seeming Ponzi scheme of it all unfolded online and in public view. With potentially tens of billions of crypto coin investors' money gone, FTX’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried (known by his initials, SBF) found himself arrested in the Bahamas and then extradited to the United States to face a slew of fraud charges.
Conservatives (and Elon Musk) were very quick to point out that Democratic candidates and officials had received a lot of money from the FTX founder. They conveniently forgot to mention that FTX’s co-CEO, Ryan Salame, spent a similar amount of money on Republican officials and candidates.
On Tuesday, crypto exchange CoinDesk released a report about how broadly FTX executives, Bankman-Fried, and Salome spread their cash in Congress.
RELATED STORY: Here's a quick explainer of what happened with crypto giant FTX and how the GOP is lying about it
According to the CoinDesk report, more than a third of Congress—that’s Senate and House combined—received money from FTX in some shape or form. The report identified 196 members of the incoming Congress (out of 535) who took money from the now-reviled FTX. CoinDesk reached out to all 196 officials, and say they received responses from 53 campaigns. Of those 53 responses, “64% decided to forward the donated amounts to nonprofit causes.”
FTX itself has warned politicians who received money from the crypto exchange that clawbacks are coming and donating money might not immunize them from litigation. “Recipients are cautioned that making a payment or donation to a third party (including a charity) in the amount of any payment received from a FTX Contributor does not prevent the FTX Debtors from seeking recovery from the recipient or any subsequent transferee.”
Now, about that money. Is it all Democrats? No. No, it isn’t, you fuddy-duddy. In fact, 104 Republicans took money from FTX, in comparison to 92 Democrats. It’s almost like that means more Republicans took money from FTX. I’m no math wizard, though.
Here are some of the people who got money:
- All five Republicans in House leadership took money from FTX. That’s Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Tom Emmer, Elise Stefanik, and Gary Palmer.
- Two of the four Democrats in House leadership—Reps. Hakeem Jeffries and Pete Aquilar—took money from FTX.
- Seven of the 12 Democratic senators in leadership received money from FTX. Sens. Warren, Sanders, Warner, and Klobuchar did not.
- Sens. John Thune and Jonie Ernst were the two Republicans in Senate leadership (out of the six total) taking money from FTX.
- Republican Senators Richard Burr, Susan Collins, Chuck Grassleym Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Ben Sasse, Tim Scott, and JD Vance took money from FTX.
- Republican Representatives Bill Cassidy, Dan Crenshaw, Clay Higgins, Ronny Jackson, Bill Johnson, and Steve Womack took money from FTX.
Let’s be clear here. Lots of representatives from both sides, in the Senate and in the House, took money from FTX. This is the perfect chance for both sides to wipe the egg from their faces and collectively pass some laws that might regulate and protect consumers from this kind of fraud in the future. It won’t happen at this point, but it could. Except now that the elections are over for this cycle, the conservatives have gone very quiet about FTX, as have many Democrats.
The New York Times and others report that the case against Mr. Bankman-Fried is developing quickly, with high-level executives cutting plea deals to testify against SBF as to the awareness he and others had that what was going on behind the scenes was illegal and unethical.
The ripples of this event continue to slowly make their way out. On Wednesday, start-up news website Semafor, who received a lot of money from Bankman-Fried, announced they were looking into buying out SBF’s investment. This would potentially protect them from becoming embroiled in the clawback lawsuits that will be going down the line. Semafor says its plan would include putting the buy-out money aside for future returns.
On Tuesday, FXT released a report to its creditors saying that the exchange lost $415 million of its money due to “hacks,” but that it had recovered more than $5 billion “in crypto, cash and liquid securities.” While 5 billion may seem like a lot, it is orders of magnitude less than what is reportedly still missing.
The Republican Party seems locked in a death spiral of unpopular anti-American rights policies. They seem to believe that the most important things to America are taking away people’s rights to choose what they do with their bodies and Hunter Biden’s junk. Kerry and Markos were right in their hypothesis about the midterms and they have predictions for the upcoming year and 2024.