As others have pointed out, the FTX team donated to politicians of both parties in a very calculated way. There's a great diagram in this article that shows how the money flowed [1].

But as gross as all this is (and I think our political system's legalization of bribery is extremely gross) I tend to think that political cynics are also being insufficiently cynical about the current dynamics:

If the FTX donors were a potential future source of funds, I have no doubt that there might be some political soft-touching going on. But that's not the case. SBF et al. are never going to be a significant source of political donations in the future. (Even if they somehow manage to recover some personal wealth, they're all politically radioactive.) There's no percentage for any politician to do them political favors at this point, and a huge amount of political downside. I think what you're seeing in the Bahamas right now is mostly to be expected: a whole bunch of agencies competing to figure out who will get jurisdiction and access to any remaining funds. This requires forensic acounting and some cooperation from the principles. SBF et al. being in jail (as opposed to being free but closely watched) will just make this early process much harder.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/428c7800-c72d-4c59-9940-4376fea6e...