Former FTX leader Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried has allegedly been placed in solitary confinement after participating in an interview with conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson, which lacked approval from prison officials.
“This specific interview was not sanctioned,” a spokesperson for the US Bureau of Prisons informed The New York Times on March 7.
Bankman-Fried lacked authorization for the interview
As per a source familiar with the matter, following the publication of Bankman-Fried’s interview with Carlson, he was transferred to solitary confinement at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, where he has been detained since August 2023.
Source: Andre Cronje
The Bureau of Prisons is reported to enforce strict regulations regarding who may interact with inmates and the manner of those interactions.
The interview, released on Carlson’s YouTube channel on March 6, has attracted 730,425 views as of the time of publication.
Source: Tucker Carlson
In the discourse with Carlson, Bankman-Fried discussed his prison experience since being sentenced and shared his views on crypto regulation in the US.
Bankman-Fried expressed to Carlson that he did not perceive himself as “a criminal.”
Bankman-Fried persists in appeal battle
Although Carlson did not directly question Bankman-Fried regarding his expectations for a pardon from US President Donald Trump, he seemed open to certain Republican concepts during their conversation.
Nonetheless, following the airing of the interview, speculation regarding a potential Trump pardon has intensified within the community.
According to a March 7 post on X by the crypto predictions platform Polymarket, “the chances of an SBF pardon have almost doubled,” since the interview’s airing.
Related: SBF consistently navigated both sides of the aisle despite new Republican appeal
On January 21, merely a day after assuming office, Trump granted a full pardon to Ross Ulbricht, who had been incarcerated for 12 years for establishing the now-defunct darknet marketplace known as the Silk Road.
In the meantime, in September 2024, attorneys representing Bankman-Fried filed an appeal concerning his seven felony charges and 25-year prison sentence.
Within the 102-page brief, the legal team asserted that the former FTX CEO was “never presumed innocent,” subjected to scrutiny that purportedly influenced prosecutors, the presiding judge, and media treatment.
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