Trump explained in an interview that he would not grant clemency to SBF, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Nicolás Maduro and others.
The hope that Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) would be pardoned has disappeared. US President Donald Trump confirmed in a recent interview with The New York Times that he would not grant a presidential pardon to the jailed FTX founder.
The latest comment came about a year after SBF and his parents asked for a pardon from the president.
Trump destroys SBF’s pardon hopes
Last year, Trump pardoned several high-profile crypto figures. These include Arthur Hayes and Benjamin Delo of BitMEX, Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road and Changpeng Zhao of Binance.
Earlier this year, the infamous Bitfinex hacker, Ilya Lichtenstein, was released from prison under the First Step Act signed by Trump. This allowed his early release after serving less than two months of a five-year prison sentence.
Amid the pardon wave, SBF began its quest to secure an early release. Recall that he was arrested and jailed as the mastermind behind the cataclysmic collapse of the once-giant crypto derivatives exchange FTX in late 2022. As of March 2024, he is serving a 25-year prison sentence.
According to reports circulating at the time, SBF’s parents requested a pardon for their son in February 2025. The infamous FTX founder has also expressed a desire to be released early as he repeatedly praised Trump’s pardon for ex-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), who was convicted of importing cocaine.
However, Trump has now done so to smithereens some hope of leniency for the FTX founder. This means that Bankman-Fried will continue to serve the prison sentence and will only explore whether a pardon can be obtained if another president rules the country.
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More pardon denials
In addition to SBF, Trump also made it clear that he would not grant a presidential pardon to a number of individuals. They include Sean “Diddy” Combs, an American rapper who was imprisoned for crimes related to prostitution, and Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, who was recently arrested for narco-terrorism crimes.
Another person to whom Trump said he would not grant clemency is former New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez. He is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence on charges of bribery and acting as a foreign agent.
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