> Cynically, this makes sense to me as what he was buying was really lack of government oversight.
Yeah, I think a lot of people forget that for something like this he didn't need to actually get the government to do anything: simply delaying action gave him the chance to do hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud.
It's been coming out that he donated lots to them too so I guess we'll see. My impression overall though is that he will end up in jail, it's just going to take a while for everyone who received his money to come to terms with the scale of his fraud.
It's a dumb conspiracy in the first place -- he was a large donor to some congressional candidates, many of whom lost (over $10M of his 2022 funds went to a losing candidate in an Oregon primary). In any case, it's obvious he has zero money and zero future prospects to be politically useful so there's no reason that anyone in charge would go out of their way to "protect" him (contrary to someone like Corzine, Menendez or Rick Scott).
These theories are just weird HN conspiracies to add mystique to the very normal slow Federal justice process.
If you were a politician interested in getting more of that sweet fraudster money, tell me, what would you do to send a signal that you're open for business to the next batch of fraudsters, hang the guy that paid you, or help him out?
Sure, this may just be bullshit, we dont know, etc etc, but "he has no more money" is not a very good argument
https://fortune.com/crypto/2022/11/29/sam-bankman-fried-poli...
Cynically, this makes sense to me as what he was buying was really lack of government oversight.