The disclosure out of Delaware bankruptcy court this week that about $14 million of the donations that the convicted crypto king, Sam Bankman-Fried, made to politicians — mainly Democrats — has been recovered underscores the political stakes of his criminal case.  

Bankman-Fried, a wunderkind who made billions of dollars by founding the crypto fund FTX and the investment fund Alameda Research, was convicted in March of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy and sentenced to 25 years in prison with no possibility of parole. The trial followed the collapse of FTX and accusations that billions of dollars in customer deposits were misused.

Bankman-Fried has appealed those verdicts, and argued that Judge Lewis Kaplan’s stewardship of the trial was crosswise with federal criminal procedure and that it was injurious to his due process rights. That appeal, which could result in a new trial before a new judge, is now before the Second United States Appeals Circuit. Bankman-Fried’s attorneys write the circuit riders that their client “was never presumed innocent.”

Before the collapse of Bankman-Fried’s empire, headquartered in the Bahamas, his wealth was felt everywhere from politics to popular culture. The government contends that Bankman-Fried used customer funds to make more than $100 million in political campaign contributions. 

Now, a new filing in bankruptcy court discloses that about $14 million of that sum has been clawed back. Bankman-Fried alleges that FTX’s bankruptcy was mishandled by the Sullivan & Cromwell law firm and accuses the firm of working with prosecutors. A report from a Department of Justice examiner disputes those claims.

This latest notice out of Wilmington declares that claims against a range of political entities have been “consummated.” The recipients of FTX’s largesse include the Senate Majority PAC, which describes itself as “dedicated to building a Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate.” Another $1 million went to People for the American Way, which declares that it was founded “to fight right-wing extremism.”

Bankman-Fried did give $375,000 to the Republican Governors Association, though the Center for Responsive Politics reports that ahead of the 2022 election he trailed only the investor George Soros among donations to Democrats. Bankman-Fried took to YouTube in 2022 to claim that he has given an equal amount of money to Republicans, but that all of his “Republican donations were dark … because reporters freak the f– out if you donate to Republicans. They’re all super liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.”

The incoming Trump administration is widely seen as favorable to crypto, and the president-elect’s choice to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, Paul Atkins, said on a podcast last year that the “collapse of FTX was this international debacle that happened because, I think, the U.S. didn’t make our rules accommodating to this new technology.”

The journalist Michael Lewis, who wrote a book about Bankman-Fried — which is in early development by A24 and Apple to be transformed into a movie written by Lena Dunham — reported last year that the fallen mogul considered offering Trump $5 billion not to run for president. A Trump campaign spokesman called Bankman-Fried a “liar.”

Now, though, Bankman-Fried’s fate could hinge on a presidential pardon from the man he reportedly once tried to bribe out of a run for office. Trump, who has called bitcoin “not money” and criticized it as “highly volatile and based on thin air,” told a cryptocurrency convention this summer that “if crypto is going to define the future, I want it to be mined, minted and made in the USA.”