These donations were pretty clearly part of a forward-play on having a prominent seat at the table for writing regulations, it’s not really a secret that they were planning to try to starve out Binance through crypto regulation.

Also while it’s kind of a thing to buy influence to the legislative process, buying your way out of justice isn’t really. There’s way too much apparatus outside of electoral politics. FTX wasn’t investigated because what were they going to be investigated for, it’s an unregulated offshore financial outfit with no signs of distress until it went boom, like most “Ponzi schemes”.

Yup, money to politicians does tend to make them look away.