FTX billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried funneled dark money to Republicans | Hacker News Reader

FTX billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried funneled dark money to Republicans

theguardian.com

57 pointsjasonhansel31 comments

>“I donated to both parties. I donated about the same amount to both parties,” Bankman-Fried told the crypto commentator and citizen journalist Tiffany Fong.

>“All my Republican donations were dark,” he said, referring to political donations that are not publicly disclosed. “The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the fuck out if you donate to Republicans. They’re all super liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.”

Well, that's brazenly honest, I guess.

he says he made donations based on covid policies. which republicans had covid policies that he would have agreed with? honestly this sounds like deflection, why should we believe it without any evidence?

Maybe he liked horse dewormer or UV blasting people's insides or drinking bleach?

The UV blasting is an actual medical treatment that has been worked on for a while before that tweet…

https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-experimental-ultraviolet-lig...

so is using disinfectant inside the body, almost a cleaning: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8026810/

Exactly. Let's see the receipts. This man is the biggest fraud in a generation. How can anyone quote him credulously after everything that's happened?

So, take the massive fraudster at his word when he supports your pre-existing beliefs? Do you also believe that parties interested in supplying billions in funding contacted him just after he signed the bankruptcy paperwork, as he's also recently claimed?

Do you believe it is honest because it's something you want to hear? This is the single fundamental concept that con artistry boils down to.

Whenever anybody says "<something you want to hear>, I can't show you but trust me," the reaction shouldn't be to marvel at their honesty, it should be to smell bullshit and ask yourself what their angle is. I mean even when they're not a known conman and liar who just fleeced people out of billions of dollars. I feel this should go without saying but there are an incredible amount of people still lining up to believe this clown for some reason.

But let's not talk about the overwhelming donations to Democrats?

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/11/05/cryptocurrency-c...

They have been talked about a lot.

The news is that we are discovering that he wasn’t just funneling money to Democrats.

Even his public money was weighted towards Democrats 2:1…it’s not like he was publicly only donating to Democrats, but now it appears that overall he probably donated equally to both parties.

It's mentioned right there in the friggin article.

> The crypto entrepreneur was thought to be a big donor to Democrats but now acknowledges he gave equally to GOP

He claims that he gave equally. Is there any evidence / corroboration?

I agree that he’s not particularly trustworthy but what would be his motivation for lying here? I can’t come up with any.

If you believe Democratic politicians were in league with the fraud, this would be a way to deflect attention from that I guess.

(to be clear, I don't believe that, and also see no reason he'd be lying. That doesn't mean there isn't one though - and he could also be lying for no reason)

Well…

His donations became a political hot potato so maybe they’re like “look, man, my hands are tied here so maybe if you can deflect some of this heat we can work something out.” Voila, millions of untraceable donations to the republicans.

Not in the article. Maybe he’s telling the truth this time but who knows.

To me the bigger story is that he was able to give a million dollars in influence money at all, although I guess that shouldn’t be surprising.

If you weren’t aware of the orgiastic frenzy over his donations to democrats… I dunno, you been living in a cave this past month?

Posted seven times on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

I wonder, if I searched those threads, would I find your alias?

Allegedly.

(We should be extremely sceptical of anything SBF claims, rather than publish it as fact - which the headline does.)

Hopefully, they claw back all of the donations regardless of political affiliation.

The vast vast majority was to Democrats though. Unbelievable pilpul.

He said that he donated roughly equal amounts to both parties, as stated in the article.

Yeah, just conveniently they were ‘dark’, so can’t be substantiated.

How are 'dark' donations not afoul of campaign finance laws??

Or is this just another SBF lie?

Citizens United.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

It's some Supreme Court interpretation of free speech plus legislation. I remember Al Franken talking about this a bit in the context of a law requiring disclosure that he supported but was not successful.

Looks like the dynamic hasn't changed much since he talked about it.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-make-remarks-tuesday-...

Why would he be lying about this?

It seems like a potential way to derail criticism coming from Republicans, doesn't it? Or perhaps make them look shady- this guy is an adept social engineer, after all

Because his Democratic friends told him to. They want to remove the label "Major Democratic Donor" from all of SBF's negative press. How do you not see something so obvious?

Do you think that this article (the OP) qualifies as positive press? I don't even think any Republicans have changed their minds.

It is for the political party that controls the DoJ and other federal prosecuting agencies.

If those Republicans were chosen because of their anti-Trump or other pro-Democrac stances then he was funding enemies of his enemies.

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