U.S. Senate Unanimously Opposes Clemency for Sam Bankman-Fried

The U.S. Senate voted unanimously on Wednesday to oppose clemency for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, approving a nonbinding resolution that declares he should "under no circumstances receive a presidential pardon or commutation." The measure passed by unanimous consent, a procedure requiring no single senator to object, and was led by Senators Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, and Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat. Both serve as the Senate Banking Committee's digital assets subcommittee's top Republican and Democrat, respectively.

The resolution was introduced on June 17, 2026, but the Senate voted on it July 16. Lummis said of Bankman-Fried: "He had his day in court." Gallego's statement ended more tersely: "Keep him locked up." The bipartisan nature of the measure and its unanimous passage underscore institutional consensus on the FTX case despite a broader wave of crypto-related presidential pardons under the current administration.

Bankman-Fried is not eligible for release until around 2044. A jury convicted him in November 2023 on seven counts tied to the collapse of FTX. Prosecutors described the collapse as one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history, with American customers losing more than $8 billion. Bankman-Fried ran FTX, a crypto exchange that holds customer money in a broker-like custody model, and Alameda Research, a trading firm he also owned. He moved billions of dollars in FTX customer deposits to Alameda, which spent the money on trades, venture investments, political donations, and Bahamian real estate. FTX's software exempted Alameda from the rules that would have forced it to cover its losses like any other trader.

In November 2022, CoinDesk obtained Alameda's balance sheet and found that most of what the firm counted as assets was FTT, a token FTX had created itself and could issue at will. Days after that reporting, Binance announced it would sell its FTT holdings, leading to a rapid collapse in FTT prices. FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11, 2022, just over a week later.

President Donald Trump said in January 2026 he had no plans to pardon Bankman-Fried. However, Trump has since pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao and Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht, along with other white-collar offenders. The Senate resolution is nonbinding and carries no legal weight to prevent clemency, but it codifies unanimous legislative opposition to any future pardon or commutation attempt. Whether such institutional consensus meaningfully constrains a president's clemency decisions remains an open political and constitutional question.

Lummis is described as the crypto industry's most committed advocate in Congress and has spent years writing legislation the industry wants, yet she joined a unanimous Senate voice in explicitly rejecting mercy for Bankman-Fried, signaling that even industry-aligned legislators draw a hard line at FTX's scope and damage.