In 2022, the FTX founder met with senior White House officials at least four times.
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried met with government officials at the White House at least four times in 2022, including a meeting just two months before his crypto empire collapsed.
The majority of the meetings were revealed in White House visitor logs, which show that Bankman-Fried met with Counselor to the President Steve Ricchetti on April 22, 2022 and May 12, 2022, as well as another meeting on May 13 with policy advisor Charlotte Butash.
However, according to a Bloomberg report published on December 29, the former FTX CEO met with the President’s counselor Ricchette as recently as September 8, in a meeting that did not appear on the visitor logs.
The revelation has piqued the interest of members of the crypto community, who want to know why there appeared to be such a revolving door of visits between FTX and the White House.
According to the report, sources indicated that politics were not discussed at the meeting, and that discussions centered on the crypto industry, exchanges, and pandemic preparedness.
Despite the fact that I live in the Bahamas Bankman-Fried was previously accused of attempting to redirect regulators away from centralized exchanges like FTX and toward decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms like lending protocol MakerDAO as he pushed to influence crypto policy and make connections in Washington.
Bankman-Fried was a major Democratic donor, and in a Nov. 16 interview with crypto vlogger Tiffany Fong, he admitted that he had given roughly the same amount to both parties, but that his “Republican donations were dark.”
