The Democratic Party of Oregon will send $500,000 to the U.S. Marshals Service. No, they aren’t buying the U.S. Marshals Service. These are funds that had been donated to the party by an executive of the crytocurrency scam called FTX. The Department of Justice has been trying to claw back all the donations made by executives associated with the massive international scam.
The Oregon Democrats had been fined a minor $15,000 for wrongly reporting the source of the donation last year, and Oregon Republicans said the $500,000 needed to be turned over to the bankruptcy court.
Oregon Democratic Party also handed over a $7,100 donation from FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, at the request from the Department of Justice, AP reported.
The $500,000 came from Nishad Singh, a FTX executive who pleaded guilty in February to federal criminal fraud charges.
Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried is out of jail on $250 million bail, one of the largest criminal bails set in U.S. history. His parents’ home in Palo Alto, Calif. was put up as bond to ensure he doesn’t flee the country.
Bankman-Fried was one of the biggest donors to Democrats and their woke causes across the country before his empire crashed down around him, sending FTX on a track to bankruptcy. There were several others in the company who made millions of dollars in political contributions.
Alaska Democrats were beneficiaries. Bankman-Fried donated $9,756 to the Alaska Democratic Party in 2022. The party, without announcing it, refunded the money to Bankman-Fried in January, rather than returning it to bankruptcy court to make victims whole. This may be looked at with suspicion by the Justice Department, as it can be seen as an illegal transfer while bankruptcy proceedings are in process.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski was also a beneficiary of Bankman-Fried’s political largesse. Late last year, she donated that the equivalent of her contribution to a nonprofit associated with members of her own family.
Bankman-Fried founded FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange, in 2019. He gave away hundreds of millions of investors’ dollars to Democrat candidates and causes. By the end of 2022, he was in jail for essentially stealing money from thousands of cryptocurrency pioneer investors, laundering it through a sub-company called Alameda Research, and giving it to political entities on the Left, likely influencing the outcome of 2022 elections, and possibly the control of the U.S. Senate because the of the sheer size of the resources he made available to Democrats.
Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty and has tried to have the case thrown out. But U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan set a trial date for Oct. 2. It’s not unusual, however, for trial dates to get pushed forward, and observers expect this one, which is extremely high profile, will not be heard in October.
