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Comment by swores | Hacker News Reader

The people saying that were presumably making predictions about whether or not he'd be found guilty with a jail sentence (which hasn't yet happened), not that if he does something as stupid as witness tampering he wouldn't have his bail revoked (which is what has happened).

Personally I always thought it extremely likely he would get a prison sentence, but I think you're being premature to act like people who didn't think that have already been proven wrong.

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I think you missed the threads they're referencing. I see from your other comments you think there's a lot of hot takes in this thread. The threads around the time he was charged were full of nuclear takes about how the justice system was broken, how every minor development in the case meant he would get off scott free, etc. It also brought the antisemites of HN out of the woodwork to share conspiracy theories (given that SBF is a Jewish person who committed a financial crime). They were the roughest threads on HN I had seen at the time. (There were still good, insightful comments, but they were diamonds in the rough.)

This is more or less an injoke. I completely see where they're coming from.

You're forgetting how "He donated to democrats so he'll get off scott free"

Yeah, stupidest hot-take I ever saw in this case.

No politician will stick their neck out for someone based on past donations if:

1. There is little hope for future money

2. The donor is universally reviled

If anything, that donation history made the recipients even more likely to turn on him. They must distance themselves.

The opinion that I believe s most close to the truth re: favors for donations, is that politicians value constancy and dependability more than short term cash injections. One needs to be playing the game for decades before you can start earning 'get out of jail' type favors.

There is time when you cut your useful idiots loose. And when they have run out of money, or you can make example of them makes perfect sense.

People who were arguing that then probably now would argue that the politicians found a workaround: just having him not charged for bribery and campaign finance crimes. No need to investigate the recipients if the alleged crime is ignored!

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/27/prosecutors-drop-another-cha...

Keeping up to date with the news can be challenging I guess. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/08/08/sam-bankman-fried...

Isn't that limited to the small portion of funding that was via straw payments, as the extradition terms allows money laundering charges?

Both articles seem to be in agreement that the campaign finance charges are being dropped because of the extradition treaty with the Bahamas. The second article indicates that the government intends to work around that limitation by charging it as wire fraud. From my perspective that kind of workaround seems like overzealous prosecution, not deliberate under-prosecution as the GP poster implies. But what do I know.

Staying in the Bahamas after the thing blew up but before institutions started to spin their wheels was not the wisest choice a man could make. If he acted faster he could have pulled a Jho Law.

There is no chance that he doesn't spend a large part of the rest of his life in prison. The crimes and financial amounts mean 30+ in federal jail.

If he really owned the entire judiciary of the US and Bahamas his bail wouldn't have been revoked.

Honestly, it sounds like his influence absolutely helped him get cushy terms of release. It was just after _repeated_ and _willful_ violations of the conditions of bail, that it was revoked. This was not his first run-in with the judge over his bail conditions, it's wild that he was allowed more.

What are you comparing it to? There is witness intimidation going right now on another high profile case and I doubt they’ll revoke bail. I am curious what are the normal thresholds before you get bail revoked.

> There is witness intimidation going right now on another high profile case and I doubt they’ll revoke bail.

The Other Guy has the sense to do vague and diffuse public messaging that (so far, without more of a pattern or additional acts) that has still gotten him warned about continuing it.

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