Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried recently appeared on the Tucker Carlson podcast, the latest stop on his media "rebranding tour," in which the SBF claimed he was sentenced to 25 years in prison in part because of his growing ties to the Republican Party before his arrest. "In 2020, I was a center-left donor to the Biden campaign," the SBF said, "but by the end of 2022, my private donations to Republicans were on par with those to Democrats. This became known around the time of the FTX crash, and may have played a role." In fact, the SBF has donated more than $40 million to 196 members of Congress, including top Republicans and Democrats, the equivalent of a third of whom received funding from him. He also criticized former SEC Chairperson Gary Gensler and the way the crypto industry is regulated in the interview. According to a Google document leaked during the SBF trial, he considered a variety of ways to rebrand himself, including "publicly criticizing political correctness" and "appearing on Tucker Carlson to identify himself as a Republican," a strategy now being pursued in the context of Republican control of Washington. SBF's parents - former Stanford Law School professors Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman - are reportedly meeting with lawyers and others in Trump's circle to try to secure a presidential pardon for their son. SBF has also recently posted comments on social media about the difficulties of layoffs, which have been criticized by the crypto community as an attempt to curry favor with the Trump administration.