Swift Conviction of a Fallen Crypto Mogul, Sam Bankman-Fried, Could Spell Bad News for Trump

At first blush, President Trump and Samuel Bankman-Fried appear to have little in common beside memorable hair. The two men, though, are both under siege from federal prosecutors, and share similar circumstances — their inner circles have turned on them, and prosecutors are employing elastic and creative means to bring them down. The convicted crypto tycoon, a Democratic mega-donor, made and lost a fortune in the Wild West of digital currency. Mr. Trump is a New York City scion turned populist tribune who rose to the presidency on the receipts of a family real estate empire parlayed into television fame. A civil court has already found him liable for inflating the value of his assets. Yet Bankman-Fried’s convictions for conspiracy and fraud — a jury found him guilty on every count — carry warnings for the former president, who himself stands accused of various species of conspiracy. The FTX founder, 31, could be sentenced to more than a century in prison. Jury deliberations took about four hours. He is expected to appeal. While the charges against Mr. Trump and Bankman-Fried are not identical, they overlap. The erstwhile prodigy from Silicon Valley was convicted on two counts of fraud and five counts of conspiracy. With respect to the events of January 6, 2021, Mr. Trump faces charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. Mr. Trump also faces conspiracy charges in his Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. Those involve efforts he allegedly made with his valet, Waltine Nauta, to obstruct the recovery of records he was storing at his Palm Beach manse. While Mr. Nauta has not agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, another employee, Yuscil Taveras, has come to an arrangement involving immunity. Bankman-Fried knows well how damaging testimony from an inner circle can be for a defendant’s case. Three of his lieutenants pleaded guilty to fraud and turned state’s evidence. They all pointed the finger at Bankman-Fried for the implosion of an enterprise once thought to be worth $32 billion. These include his former girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, who told the packed courtroom that she “felt this sense of relief that I didn’t have to lie anymore.”A similar dynamic could be building with respect to Mr. Trump, though thus far it does not appear that prosecutors have penetrated his inner circle to the extent they did with Bankman-Fried’s. In Georgia, four of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants — three of them lawyers affiliated with the former president — in District Attorney Fani Willis’s racketeering case have struck deals to avoid jail time in exchange for cooperation.More serious for Mr. Trump could be the reported cooperation of his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, with Special Counsel Jack Smith in the January 6 case. CBS News reports that Mr. Trump’s allies are “growing increasingly alarmed that Meadows is testifying in detail and without reservation because he might be seeking an immunity deal or may already have an understanding with prosecutors.”Part of why prosecutors in conspiracy — and racketeering — cases can usually rely on at least some defendants to demur from taking their cases to verdicts is because conspiracy requires only an agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act and one act — it need not be a crime — in furtherance of that aim. It is a crime apart from the ultimate success of the scheme. Fraud charges can also be hard to shake, as they do not require that the affected party suffer any monetary loss. While Bankman-Fried’s actions resulted in the evaporation of billions of dollars, it is unknown how much, if at all, his investors will be harmed in the long run. Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election did not prosper, a failure that does not relieve him of the specter of a conviction. The Supreme Court, in parsing one of the charges against Mr. Trump — conspiracy to defraud the United States — held, “It is not necessary that the Government shall be subjected to property or pecuniary loss by the fraud, but only that its legitimate official action and purpose shall be defeated.”In her closing argument to the jury on Thursday, one that could soon preview rhetoric raised with respect to Mr. Trump, a federal prosecutor, Danielle Sassoon, explained that Bankman-Fried “didn’t bargain for his three loyal deputies taking that stand and telling you the truth: That he was the one with the plan.”

Swift Conviction of a Fallen Crypto Mogul, Sam Bankman-Fried, Could Spell Bad News for Trump

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