SBF’s Cellmate: No Pardon for Sam Bankman-Fried, He Never Admitted Guilt

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Sam Bankman-Fried’s Cellmate Says He Never Owned Up — And That’s Why A Pardon Won’t Come

Sam Bankman-Fried says he would “absolutely” welcome a pardon from US President Donald Trump.

Trump, for his part, has already said no.

Cellmate Speaks Up

Michael Avenatti, who was incarcerated with former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, claimed Bankman-Fried never acknowledged any guilt. Unlike Donald Trump, who briefly downplayed the situation in January, Avenatti stated that Bankman-Fried never admitted wrongdoing – not in private conversations, casual remarks, or at any point during their time together.

“Not once did he admit he’d done anything wrong,” Avenatti wrote, adding that redemption begins with accepting responsibility. Without that, he argued, a pardon request carries no real weight.

Michael Avenatti isn’t an unbiased source of commentary. He’s a convicted criminal currently in prison for extortion and fraud, so his criticism of Sam Bankman-Fried should be viewed considering his own legal troubles.

I shared a prison cell with Sam Bankman-Fried, so I have a personal understanding of him and read this information with that in mind.

Sam and I repeatedly clashed over his unwillingness to take accountability for his actions. He never admitted fault, not even once…

— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) June 8, 2026

Despite everything, Avenatti didn’t completely dismiss Bankman-Fried. He saw him as a truly gifted and innovative tech mind. According to Avenatti, the issue wasn’t a lack of intelligence, but rather SBF’s poor self-awareness and inability to recognize his own shortcomings.

FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried formally applied for a presidential pardon

— Bloomberg (@business) June 8, 2026

The Leadership Question

Avenatti likened the situation to Google’s early days. When Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded the company, they wisely hired Eric Schmidt, a seasoned leader, to manage its operations. They understood their own limitations. According to Avenatti, Sam Bankman-Fried never did that – he didn’t bring in someone with the necessary experience to help guide his company.

According to Michael Avenatti, FTX likely wouldn’t have failed if Sam Bankman-Fried had employed someone with practical business experience and actually listened to their advice. Avenatti believes that if SBF had done so, he could currently be worth nearly $100 billion and not facing legal consequences.

That claim doesn’t align well with the official court documents. Sam Bankman-Fried is currently in prison, serving a 25-year sentence for his involvement in the failure of FTX.

His conviction centered on the commingling of customer funds — a finding he continues to dispute. He has maintained that FTX customers were ultimately repaid, a claim critics reject as a distortion of the full picture.

Trump’s Position On The Record

Trump has already publicly stated his position on this matter. In January, he told The New York Times he doesn’t plan to pardon SBF.

As a researcher tracking presidential pardons, I’ve observed that during his second term, Donald Trump granted over 1,400 pardons and commutations. Remarkably, more than 1,200 of these were connected to individuals involved in the January 6th events.

SBF has not appeared on any list of people under consideration.

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2026-06-10 01:11