S.B.F.’s McConnell Money Tickle

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Happy Friday, and welcome back to The Stratosphere.

In today’s special issue, I take a close look at Sam Bankman-Fried’s recently-made, dubious claim that he donated “about the same amount” of money to Republicans this past election cycle as he did to Democrats—but that these donations were made through “dark money” channels to avoid leaving a paper trail for the media. Yes, a newly-disclosed $1 million donation from FTX to Mitch McConnell’s main super PAC was just one part of a new push from FTX to win allies on the right. I have new exclusive details on all of that. But as you’ll read below, my sources inside and around S.B.F. world are highly skeptical that the contributions to Republicans came anywhere close to his spending for Democrats. As with everything S.B.F. and FTX, nothing is really what it seems.

Teddy

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S.B.F.’s McConnell Money Tickle

In his previous life as crypto boy king, S.B.F. was fetishized as a modern Soros. But he cared about power and relevance, which is why, yes, he gave some dark-money to Republicans, too.

TEDDY SCHLEIFER

In the final months of this year’s midterms cycle, the teams behind Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX began to grow concerned about a Republican takeover of Congress that would leave him poorly positioned in Washington, I’m told. S.B.F., after all, had spent about $40 million boosting mostly Democrats, and as the C.E.O. of FTX—the largely unregulated, now bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange—he could see that was likely to be a liability in a G.O.P.-run legislature. He was saying all the right things about his desire to be bipartisan. But there was no doubt that he appeared, on paper at least, to be...

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