There used to be a joke I’d hear around Washington, that everyone in town with an ounce of ambition was, in some way or another, on the payroll of Sam Bankman-Fried. And if you hadn’t figured out how to get on the gravy train, well, that was on you. Like all good jokes, there was more than a kernel of truth to all of it: I’ve covered the S.B.F. political machine as closely as anyone over the last few years, and I still encounter new names of lobbyists who were secretly on Sam’s retainer, of data savants who found a way into D.C.’s greatest donor-fueled growth industry, and amazingly, nonprofits that were moving millions of FTX-connected dollars without a scintilla of public knowledge.
Since last November, of course, any exposure to Sam or his money has been more like a scarlet letter, forcing nearly all of his political aides to lawyer up and play defense against federal investigations and by FTX itself. Which is why I was particularly interested when it emerged that FTX—or rather the carcass of FTX, now led by former Enron bankruptcy executive John Ray III—had expressed its intention in a legal filing to subpoena Gabe Bankman-Fried, Sam’s well-connected and once sneakily powerful younger brother. Gabe, as I reported earlier this month, is under pressure by FTX and its attorneys at Sullivan & Cromwell to comply with document requests and fork over any information pertaining to his work as a political operative and aide for his brother.
Complaints from FTX debtors should be a comparatively minor worry for Gabe, who is also being scrutinized by federal prosecutors for campaign-finance violations and has to triage. But something in FTX’s filing caught my attention. Buried on the 100th page of the filing was a single paragraph that enumerated all of the corporate and nonprofit entities that FTX believes Gabe could speak to, ones that Sam or Gabe “founded, directed, advised or were otherwise involved with.” Nine entities were listed: Some were well-known, like Gabe’s lobbying group, Guarding Against Pandemics. Others weren’t exactly prominent, but have previously appeared in my coverage, such as Planning for Tomorrow, a civic fellowship program for effective altruists supported by GAP. (FTX also missed some organizations I’ve reported on, such as The Center for The Future.) But there were three groups that, I’ll admit, I had never heard of in my years covering the Bankman-Frieds. Those bread crumbs, left by Sullivan & Cromwell, have led me to some new revelations about the FTX dark-money machine.
