In Dollar We Trust: How money has muddied American politics—Sam Bankman-Fried purchased Democrats, Republicans

Democracy is all about the will of the people. It is a special, specific contract between people and the State, wherein the former elect who wields power over the institutions of the latter. But, that’s just in theory, at least, when it comes to the United States of America.

Here is a democracy, ostensibly the oldest one in the world, where you can buy democracy; pocket not just politicians, but their politics too. And, this you can do across ideologies. Ideologies might divide the world, but in the US money bridged ideological chasms on the uninterrupted continuum of corruption and brinkmanship.

While, a former president may be have become the focal point of a political witch hunt along ideological faultlines, both Democrats and Republicans were bought by tainted and bankrupt former billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, owner of the collapsed FTX crypto exchange, to support or scuttle legislation that would enable or impede, respectively, the expansion of his shady business.

Ryan Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX’s Bahamian subsidiary and Bankman-Fried’s right hand mana pleaded guilty on Thursday to making tens of millions of dollars in unlawful campaign donations to boost causes supported by his boss. He was incharge to donating to the Republicans.

Sam Bankman-Fried stole money from the customers of his FTX cryptocurrency exchange to give out over $100 million in political campaign contributions before the 2022 US midterm elections.

“He leveraged this influence, in turn, to lobby Congress and regulatory agencies to support legislation and regulation he believed would make it easier for FTX to continue to accept customer deposits and grow,” Fried’s indictment says. The indictment also accuses the 31-year-old of telling two FTX executives to evade contribution limits by donating to Democrats and Republicans. He also concealed the origin of the funds, it is alleged.

So, the latest case of Salame comes as no surprise. Salame has become the fourth former top employees of Bankman-Fried’s companies to plead guilty to having committed financial bungling with both sides of the political field in the US.

Bankman-Fried was so confident of his political asset acquisitions that he used the phrase “weed out” for politicians— anti-crypto Democratic and Republican lawmakers—whose defeats he would engineer with his donations. Doing his boss’ bidding, Salame handed out over $24 million to Republican candidates and causes in the 2022 election cycle.

As usual, the dark underbelly of American politics and the financial wrongdoings of Bankman-Fried were covered up by such tools as showing the funds as “loans” from Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund. He stole from FTX customers to stop Alameda from bleeding. These loans were never to be repaid.

“I knew it was prohibited by campaign finance laws to make contributions in my name with money that was not my own,” Salame has copped.

This, however, is not the first time that money has muddied political waters in the US. In 2018, over $5 million worth shares of Chinese tech behemoth Baidu, often accused of being allied with China’s Communist Party, were donated to the Democrats.

But, as expected, how could just Democrats get Chinese money? Why not Republicans? According to reports, China pumped in hundreds of thousands of dollars into Donald Trump’s re-election bid, just after he assumed office. Many of those carrying out these donations were directly linked to the Communist China’s security establishment.

It has also been reported that US intelligence agencies have determined that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election in favour of Donald Trump.

The author is News Editor, Firstpost. He tweets from @SiddharthaRai2. Views expressed are personal.