Former President Donald Trump (AP/Ben Gray)
Billionaire financier Sam Bankman-Fried, now on trial for fraud, sought to give then-President Trump a payoff in exchange for not running for reelection.
By World Israel News Staff
An upcoming book claims that a 31-year-old billionaire financier now on trial for fraud offered then-President Donald Trump a cash payoff if he would drop out of the 2020 presidential election.
According to an excerpt obtained by The Washington Post of Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, an upcoming release by Michael Lewis on California billionaire and liberal donor Sam Bankman-Fried, the now disgraced financier had sought a channel to then-President Donald Trump ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Lewis claimed that Bankman-Fried, who is arrested last December after allegedly defrauding clients of billions of dollars, told him that he was evaluating whether it would be legal to bribe Trump not to run for reelection.
“On a separate front, he explained to me, as the plane descended into Washington, he was exploring the legality of paying Donald Trump himself not to run for president,” Lewis wrote in an excerpt published by the Post Monday.
The young billionaire also sent emissaries to make contact with confidants of the president in order to broach the idea of a payment in exchange for Trump declining to run in 2020.
In his book, however, Lewis claims that while Trump responded that he was receptive to the idea, his price was too high for Bankman-Fried.
“His team had somehow created a back channel into the Trump operation and returned with the not terribly Earth-shattering news that Donald Trump might indeed have his price: $5 billion. Or so Sam was told by his team.”
A spokesman for Bankman-Fried and spokesperson for the former president declined to respond to the book’s claims.
Bankman-Fried, founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, fled the U.S. to the Bahamas after FTX declared bankruptcy in November 2022.
A month later he was arrested and extradited after being charged with fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance violations.
If convicted he could be sentenced to up to 110 years in prison.
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