--- title: "US Senate Opposes Clemency for Sam Bankman-Fried" date: 2026-07-16 author: "Kelvin Scott" featured_image: "https://coinlaw.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/us-senate-opposes-clemency-for-sam-bankman-fried.jpg" categories: - name: "Cryptocurrency" url: "/crypto.md" tags: - name: "News" url: "/tag/news.md" --- # US Senate Opposes Clemency for Sam Bankman-Fried On July 15, 2026, the U.S. Senate agreed by unanimous consent to S.Res.772, declaring that convicted FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried should not, under any circumstances, receive a presidential pardon, commutation, or any other form of Federal clemency. ## Key Takeaways - The Senate agreed to S.Res.772 by unanimous consent, meaning no senator objected or forced a recorded floor vote. - A federal jury convicted Bankman-Fried on all 7 counts in the FTX fraud case, including wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering conspiracy. - Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered $11,000,000,000 in forfeiture on top of a 25-year prison sentence after the FTX collapse. - Bankman-Fried has a pending petition for a presidential pardon with the Office of the Pardon Attorney of the Department of Justice (DOJ). - Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) sponsored the resolution, which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary before it passed. ## Senate Passes Resolution Against Clemency Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) introduced the measure in **June 2026**, and it moved through the Committee on the Judiciary before clearing the floor by unanimous consent, per Congress’s public record. The vote lands against a backdrop of climbing [Cryptocurrency Frauds](https://coinlaw.io/cryptocurrency-security-fraud-statistics/), even as [Crypto Enforcement Data](https://coinlaw.io/sec-and-cftc-regulations-on-cryptocurrencies-statistics/) shows regulators leaning harder into the sector Bankman-Fried once dominated. The text of [S.Res.772](https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-resolution/772/text) also rejects any characterization of the FTX prosecution as “**lawfare**,” and affirms the integrity of the Federal criminal justice process that produced Bankman-Fried’s conviction by a unanimous jury and sentence by an independent Federal judge. Federal prosecutors, the resolution notes, called the collapse one of the biggest financial frauds in American history. > The U.S. Senate has unanimously passed a resolution declaring FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried should “under no circumstances” receive a presidential pardon or commutation. > > He’s not eligible for release until ~2044. > > Bipartisan measure led by [@SenLummis](https://x.com/SenLummis?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) & [@RubenGallego](https://x.com/RubenGallego?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) . [pic.twitter.com/rnM1SQaun2](https://t.co/rnM1SQaun2) > > — CoinLaw (@coinlaw\_io) [July 16, 2026](https://x.com/coinlaw_io/status/2077659040654688400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) ## The Case Against Bankman-Fried A federal jury in the **Southern District of New York** found Bankman-Fried guilty on 2 counts of wire fraud, 1 count of securities fraud, 1 count of commodities fraud, and 1 count of money laundering conspiracy, along with 2 conspiracy counts tied to customer and lender funds on November 2, 2023. Prosecutors said he used Alameda Research as his personal “**piggy bank**,” according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. On March 28, 2024, **United States District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan** sentenced Bankman-Fried to 25 years in Federal prison and ordered forfeiture on top of the losses the fraud caused. The resolution breaks the numbers down this way: FigureAmountPrison sentence25 yearsForfeiture ordered**$11,000,000,000**FTX customer lossesmore than **$8,000,000,000**Equity investor lossesmore than **$1,700,000,000**Alameda Research lender lossesmore than **$1,300,000,000**Bankman-Fried formally [submitted a petition for a presidential pardon](https://coinlaw.io/sam-bankman-fried-seeks-trump-pardon/) to the **Office of the Pardon Attorney of the Department of Justice** in 2026, with the application listed as “**pardon after completion of sentence**” and currently pending. That pending filing is what turns S.Res.772 from a symbolic gesture into a direct answer to an active request already sitting inside the executive branch. ## Implications for Crypto Policy The Senate’s **100 members** needed zero objections to pass the measure by unanimous consent; a single objection would have forced a recorded vote or blocked the resolution outright. That the measure moved without friction, in a Congress otherwise split on **crypto market structure legislation**, marks a rare point of agreement: neither party wants to be seen easing accountability for a fraud that reshaped the industry’s reputation. **Cynthia Lummis** has built her Senate career as one of Congress’s most active crypto policy advocates. Her co-sponsorship separates support for digital-asset innovation from excusing the person whose collapse did the most damage to that industry’s credibility. Bankman-Fried co-founded FTX, a digital asset exchange that grew to become one of the largest in the world in only 3 years after its founding, and **Alameda Research**, a [digital asset hedge fund](https://coinlaw.io/crypto-hedge-funds-statistics/). FTX’s failure remains the reference point regulators cite when tightening custody and disclosure rules. S.Res.772 carries no legal force of its own. A sense of the Senate resolution cannot block a pardon the president is constitutionally free to grant. It works instead as a public, on-the-record signal to the White House and the Department of Justice, not a legal bar. Its practical weight is political: a unanimous chamber has now put itself on record against clemency while the Office of the Pardon Attorney reviews an active request. ## CoinLaw’s Takeaway **Bankman-Fried’s 25-year sentence** was set in March 2024; what changed is that **100 senators** just went on record saying it should stay that way. The Senate cannot stop a president from granting clemency, but attaching every senator’s name to a “**should not, under any circumstances**” standard raises the political cost of a pardon considerably. For an industry still working to convince Washington that FTX’s collapse was a personal failure rather than a structural one, having its most prominent congressional ally co-sign that message carries more weight than another year of lobbying. The more telling fact is what the resolution does not do. It does not touch FTX’s unresolved bankruptcy claims, and it does not stop a president from acting regardless of how the Senate votes. What it does is place a permanent, unanimous marker in the record that the chamber views Bankman-Fried’s fraud as disqualifying, not merely criminal, at the moment his own petition asks the Department of Justice to conclude otherwise.