Greetings, once again, from San Francisco.

Tonight, a look at the legal state of play for Ryan Salame, the flirty Berkshires restaurateur (and former top FTX executive-turned-Republican mega-donor) who could be the last guy to flip on Sam Bankman-Fried.

But first…

• Another Thiel Shakeup: Peter Thiel has made yet another change at his family office, which has been beset by some drama and plenty of comings-and-goings over the last year or so. I’ve learned that Brian Rowen, the head of Thiel’s family office and foundation for the last year or so after Blake Masters departed to run for the U.S. Senate, recently left Thiel Capital. I’ve chronicled how Rowen, at Thiel’s behest, had endeavored to clean up some of the riff-raff at Thiel Capital over the last year or so, including figuring out what exactly some people—such as longtime Thiel loyalists Eric Weinstein and Jimmy Kaltreider—were actually doing day to day.

  My understanding is that Rowen’s departure is another attempt by Thiel to get a better handle on the operations of his own shop; he said as much at a recent all-hands meeting. He has asked Dave Wheelock, the firm’s general counsel, to lead it in at least an interim capacity going forward. Nevertheless, I’m told that Thiel remains on good terms with Rowen, who recently started as Managing Director at a venture capital firm called Fifth Down Capital.

The dinner was proposed by Salame’s team, but the love flowed both ways. The explicit purpose of the meeting, according to a memo Axiom prepared beforehand, was “to build a relationship with these TOP donors,” noting that Sam Bankman-Fried was the “5th biggest Republican donor this cycle,” among other potentially useful biographical details (Salame was “very proud of a group of restaurants he owns in the Berkshires,” Deaton was “married to a man” and “considers himself a left of center Republican,” etcetera). Salame was, by that point, a serious G.O.P. powerbroker himself. Earlier that year, he had quietly supplied now-Senator Eric Schmitt, an Axiom client, with several hundred thousand dollars to win the Missouri Republican primary. Salame had occasionally consulted Roe for informal advice on the finer points of congressional politics. Roe, who viewed Salame as an ascendant purse in the party, was happy to oblige.

Of course, much has changed since that dinner. FTX declared bankruptcy two months after the Capital Grille meeting, and S.B.F. was arrested a few weeks later. Salame himself was identified as one of the unindicted co-conspirators mentioned in S.B.F.’s indictment, and he remains a target of at least two investigations regarding potential campaign finance violations, including one involving his girlfriend, former congressional candidate Michelle Bond.

Indeed, Salame’s fate is perhaps the last unresolved mystery before the criminal trial of S.B.F. begins in just six weeks. Naturally, it’s also the subject of much chatter among Salame’s former associates, who have been wondering if he will cut a deal or testify against his former boss, as Bloomberg recently reported. There have been few clues one way or the other. Salame has been a ghost in recent months, fiercely clinging to his privacy.

The vanishing act seemed to be working, at least until Monday evening, when Salame’s name appeared in a footnote halfway through a 70-page preliminary motion filed by the Southern District of New York, the first time his name was mentioned in public filings related to the S.B.F. case. Salame’s attorney, presumably Jason Linder, had told prosecutors that if subpoenaed, Salame would plead the Fifth and refuse to incriminate himself. Salame, prosecutors said, was therefore “unavailable as a witness” as of Monday. That does not sound like someone who is on the cusp of a plea deal—that sounds like someone who is prepared to play hardball for as long as it takes.

But even without his cooperation, prosecutors are determined to include “hearsay” from Salame in the case this fall. Prosecutors allege in the most recent motion that Salame was “admitting to his role as a straw donor for the defendant” when he sent a text to a “trusted family member,” which prosecutors have obtained. Salame allegedly said that S.B.F. “want[ed] to donate to both democtratic [sic] and republican candidates in the US,” but would not do so “cause the worlds frankly lost its mind if you dontate [sic] to a democrat no republicans will speak to you and if you donate to a republican then no democrats will speak to you.” According to prosecutors, “Salame further explained that the purpose of these bipartisan donations would be ‘to weed out anti crypto dems for pro crypto dems and anti crypto repubs for pro crypto repubs,’” and that it was likely that S.B.F. would “route money through me to weed out that republican side.”

Whether any such “routing” is merely loose talk or constitutes a provable criminal act will depend on whatever financial records prosecutors have obtained. As I’ve written, I’ve long been skeptical of the campaign-finance charges against S.B.F. and his allies, in part because it’s hard to distinguish between a dollar-for-dollar reimbursement scheme, which is criminal, and the sort of hand-wavey “go make some donations with these loans” directive that happens all the time with K Street salaries. Prosecutors said in Monday’s filing that they had “financial analysis that shows the routing of corporate money through Salame’s accounts … was then used for political donation,” but defense lawyers I’ve spoken to are skeptical that the government can demonstrate a quid pro quo. That is the crux of a straw-donor scheme.

Deaton’s fate has also become a subject of much chatter in S.B.F.-affiliated political circles. A Georgia-based, linebacker-built, former adviser to groups affiliated with hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, Deaton definitely rubbed some people in both Republican and Democratic political circles the wrong way, as donor-advisers tend to do. He hasn’t returned requests for comment, although I’ve been told by others that he has personal counsel for this matter. Deaton has also said little in recent conversations to associates, except to tell a well-wisher recently that he hoped Salame and Bond wouldn’t go to jail. But given how hard the feds seem to be going after Ryan, and given how centralized the G.O.P. part of the FTX operation was, it’s hard to believe he hasn’t received a knock on the door, just as many of the political aides around S.B.F. and Nishad Singh have.

Whether the campaign-finance investigation is truly over—or just tabled—is a topic that still divides many of my S.B.F. sources. It is certainly less intense than it was this spring. Yet the stakes became a hell of a lot less theoretical after Bankman-Fried was incarcerated last week. I had been reporting on whether the feds might finally get Salame to flip when I raced up to New York on Friday to watch a judge rule on whether to take S.B.F. into custody for witness tampering. A few days earlier, the campaign finance allegations against him had been reinstated in drastically diluted form, as further evidence for the prosecution’s wire-fraud and money-laundering charges. With no individual campaign-finance charge, Salame isn’t as relevant to prosecutors as he once was, but recruiting him to become another star witness would certainly further isolate S.B.F., at least legally speaking.

I couldn’t help but gaze, too, as they sat through the tense, 90 minute hearing. Joe hunched forward, and Barbara buried her face in her hands when Judge Kaplan declared that he was prepared to make his ruling right then and there. It was clear, just a few seconds into his preamble, that their son would be going to jail. When the ruling came down, and Sam began handing off his suit jacket and tie and shoelaces to his lawyer and emptying his pockets, Barbara rushed toward the defense table and tried to comfort him, before being intercepted by three burly U.S. Marshals. It was hard not to feel for them.

His parents, after all, are essentially all he has got at this point. Sam, as of now, is sitting in the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center—“not on anyone’s list of five-star facilities” as Kaplan said on Friday—although he might be transferred to a jail in Putnam County because it has better access to Internet resources that he needs to prepare for his October trial. Sam already faces long odds. To lose Salame wouldn’t be to lose a friend—Ryan was sort of too cool to be in the inner circle—but for the last holdout to flip would suggest, symbolically at least, that his goose is cooked.