FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, once a mogul in the cryptocurrency industry, thought about using his fortune to pay former President Donald Trump millions to drop out of the 2024 presidential election.
Bankman-Fried viewed Trump as an "existential threat to humanity" and partnered with allies of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), pledging $15 million to $30 million to defeat Trump-endorsed candidates in the 2022 midterm Senate races, according to an excerpt from Michael Lewis's book on Bankman-Fried. But the cryptocurrency billionaire had his sights, and his money, set on a higher prize.
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"On a separate front, he explained to me, as the plane descended into Washington, he was exploring the legality of paying Donald Trump himself not to run for president," Lewis wrote, according to an excerpt in the Washington Post.
Bankman-Fried's team reportedly created a "back channel" of communications with Trump's campaign, where the latter told the former how much it would cost for Trump to abandon his pursuit of the White House: $5 billion.
"Trump’s assault on the government, and on the integrity of U.S. elections, belonged, to Sam’s way of thinking, on the same list as pandemics and artificial intelligence and climate change," Lewis wrote.
McConnell was one of several high-level Republicans who blamed Trump for Republicans' less-than-expected performance in the 2022 midterm elections. Candidates endorsed by the former president beat centrist Republicans in the primaries but went on to lose to Democrats in the general election.
According to Lewis, McConnell and his allies sensed danger and sought to prevent some extremely hard-line conservatives from going past the Republican primaries.
"Across the land, Republican primaries were littered with candidates who were willing to behave as if the presidential election had been stolen from Trump. They faced candidates who were forced to pay lip service to the idea. McConnell’s people had already figured out which was which, and McConnell was intent on defeating the former," Lewis wrote.
“'He’s already done the work,' said Sam. The work, he added, was to distinguish 'people who would actually try to govern versus people who would undermine the government,'" Lewis continued.
Since the midterm elections, both Bankman-Fried and Trump have found themselves going from billionaire businessmen to defendants in court.
Bankman-Fried, 31, will stand trial this week in one of the biggest fraud cases in U.S. history. Prosecutors allege that he stole billions of dollars from FTX customers for his own personal use and to cover costs from Alameda Research, a crypto hedge fund he also controlled. They also argue that Bankman-Fried defrauded investors by covering up the scheme.
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He has pleaded not guilty to seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in connection to the collapse of FTX, his crypto trading platform. If convicted and given the maximum sentence, Bankman-Fried could spend the next 110 years in prison. The trial begins with jury selection on Tuesday and is expected to last up to six weeks.
Trump appeared in court in New York on Monday for the start of his civil fraud trial involving the Trump Organization on allegations he inflated assets on financial statements to get better terms on real estate loans and insurance policies. He also faces four criminal cases: two at the federal level, one out of Manhattan, and one out of Fulton County, Georgia.