Senator Lummis torches SBF, blasting the pardon‑seeker by warning her Clarity Act would lock him up longer than 25 years and slamming his failed 2022 bid to buy a softer crypto bill.

Senator Cynthia Lummis used a social media post to attack convicted FTX founder Sam Bankman‑Fried while promoting her Clarity Act digital‑asset bill, arguing that its tougher anti‑fraud and anti–money‑laundering rules would have exposed and punished his conduct even more severely than his current 25‑year sentence. She also referenced his 2022 attempts to influence U.S. crypto legislation, framing them as an effort to buy a friendlier regulatory framework that ultimately failed. In a post on X, Lummis wrote that “someone’s looking for a pardon and doesn’t realize the Clarity Act would have you locked up for much longer than 25 years,” a clear allusion to Bankman‑Fried, who received a 25‑year federal sentence in 2024 for fraud and related offenses tied to the collapse of FTX. Lummis has been publicly pushing the Clarity Act, a comprehensive U.S. digital‑asset market‑structure and enforcement bill that expands Bank Secrecy Act coverage to digital‑asset brokers, dealers, and exchanges, strengthens anti‑money‑laundering and fraud provisions, and increases resources and tools for law enforcement and financial regulators. Supporters describe it as both a law‑enforcement and consumer‑protection measure, adding risk‑based exam standards, new Treasury authorities against foreign money laundering, studies on mixers and tumblers, and stricter disclosure and resale rules for digital‑asset markets. Lummis’s remark also revives criticism of Bankman‑Fried’s intense 2022 lobbying campaign, during which FTX and its founder spent heavily in Washington and backed specific legislative proposals that many in the crypto sector saw as an attempt to shape a softer, FTX‑friendly regulatory regime. By contrasting that history with her own bill’s tougher enforcement posture, Lummis is positioning the Clarity Act as a direct response to the kind of opaque practices and conflicts of interest revealed by the FTX collapse, and signaling that high‑profile fraudsters in the digital‑asset space should face harsher statutory penalties and clearer jurisdictional rules.

✨ AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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