William Cohan, one of the founders of the news site Puck, recently talked to Michael Lewis, who wrote the book "Going Infinite," which is about the guilty Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). Lewis told some interesting things about SBF's life and shared more thoughts on it during the talk.
How Sam Bankman-Fried planned to repay Trump
Cohan wrote about his conversation with Lewis in a piece that said Sam Bankman-Fried had told Lewis about the "absurd" idea of paying off Donald Trump in one of their interviews. It was said that the former founder of FTX was thinking if $5 billion would be enough to get the former President to go away and not run for president again.
Cohan said that when Bankman-Fried brought up the idea, Lewis didn't seem too sure about it. One thing that was on his mind was whether or not what SBF was saying was the law. The author of "Going Infinite" also asked Sam Bankman-Fried if he thought Trump would keep their deal even if he agreed to take the $5 billion bribe.
Lewis told SBF that Trump could just take the money and run. He asked Bankman-Fried what he could do if that happened. And as Cohan wrote in his book, Lewis seemed sure that such a deal could not work out. Lewis just thought it was funny and couldn't believe that the president of FTX and Trump could talk about something like that.
SBF wanted to get in trouble.
The book "Going Inifite" by Michael Lewis came out on October 3, the same day that Bankman-Fried's hearing started. That wasn't the end of Lewis's search for information about the FTX founder, though; he was at his hearing. He told Cohan that SBF's testimony made him look like he "wanted to be punished."
Lewis believed it because Sam Bankman-Fried kept avoiding answering questions from the lawyers, which made sense since it would mean he wasn't telling the truth. The author seems to think that the killer did it on purpose to show that he was guilty. Lewis thinks that Bankman-Fried's decision to speak in the first place shows that he wanted to be punished.
At the same time, the author told Cohan that it was "very clear" that Bankman-Fried would be found guilty right from the start of the hearing. He said that the proof the prosecution presented at the hearing was a big part of why he came to this decision. This also includes the fact that people in SBF's "inner circle" pleaded guilty and gave evidence against him.
When they testified, he said, they were feeling things that "made it all sound much more damning than it was." Caroline Ellison, who used to be CEO of Alameda Research, Gary Wang, who co-founded FTX, and Nishad Singh, who used to be Director of Engineering at FTX, were all part of the "inner circle" that testified against Bankman-Fried.
#sbf #Trump #ftx