SBF’s Pardon Hail Mary Just Hit a Bipartisan Brick Wall – He’s Staying Locked Up

Posted on by

(SeaPRwire) –   By: Lucas Caldwell

SBF’s latest play to skip out on his 25-year fraud sentence was always a long shot, but this week it just got a whole lot longer. The once golden boy of crypto, who swindled billions out of ordinary FTX users, is now begging the Trump administration for a pardon after burning through all his court appeals. His laughable claims of being a lawfare victim aren’t landing with anyone who watched his trial play out, least of all members of Congress.

On Wednesday, Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) introduced a bipartisan resolution pushing the executive branch to reject SBF’s pardon request. Both sit on the Senate Banking Committee, and they’re pushing to pass the resolution quickly. The resolution doesn’t have the power to block a presidential pardon outright, but it sends a clear, unified message from Congress that SBF belongs behind bars.

SBF was convicted back in 2023 on seven counts of fraud and money laundering, for siphoning billions in FTX customer funds to his trading firm Alameda Research. He joins a long list of crypto figures who’ve sought clemency from Trump, who already pardoned Binance’s Changpeng Zhao and Silk Road’s Ross Ulbricht earlier this term. SBF’s family has been lobbying Trump’s inner circle for months, even arranging a Tucker Carlson prison interview in March 2025.

This bipartisan pushback isn’t just about SBF individually. It’s a signal that Congress is tired of seeing high-profile white collar crypto fraudsters get off easy while ordinary users eat billions in losses. The crypto industry has spent years lobbying for looser regulations, but high-profile scams like FTX have left lawmakers on both sides of the aisle skeptical of any leniency for bad actors.

Trump’s earlier crypto pardons have already drawn criticism from consumer advocates and regulators. Signing off on a pardon for SBF, one of the most notorious fraudsters in modern US financial history, would spark massive backlash even from his own party. The White House already said back in January that Trump had no plans to pardon SBF, and this congressional resolution only hardens that position.

SBF will serve out the vast majority of his 25-year sentence, no matter how much his team lobbies the White House.

Author bio: Lucas Caldwell, a tech opinion leader with millions of followers on X/Twitter covering crypto regulation and Web3 industry accountability.