Senate Votes 100-0 Against Any Pardon For Sam Bankman-Fried

The Senate did something it almost never does on Wednesday, July 15: agree unanimously on anything. Every senator voted for S. Res. 772, a resolution stating that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried should receive no pardon and no commutation from President Trump, under any circumstances.

The vote came by unanimous consent, meaning it passed because no senator objected. That's a low bar procedurally, but the message is still real: 100 senators, including the crypto industry's biggest champion in Congress, went on record refusing to defend Bankman-Fried.

Senators Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, and Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, sponsored the resolution. They run the Senate Banking Committee's digital assets subcommittee together, one from each party. Lummis has spent years writing crypto-friendly legislation. She's also the one who introduced this measure to keep Bankman-Fried in prison.

"He had his day in court," Lummis said when the resolution was introduced. Gallego was blunter: "Keep him locked up."

What the resolution actually does — and doesn't

The resolution is nonbinding. It has zero legal force. The Constitution gives the president sole pardon power, and Congress cannot override that, according to Bitcoin Foundation's reporting. This is the Senate expressing an opinion, not passing a law.

The resolution's text calls Bankman-Fried's 25-year sentence a reflection of "the extraordinary scale and deliberateness of his crimes, his lack of remorse, and the catastrophic harm inflicted upon millions of victims," according to both ZeroHedge and Bitcoin Magazine, which published near-identical accounts of the text.

Bankman-Fried filed a formal pardon petition with the Justice Department on June 8, 2026, seeking what's called a "pardon after completion of sentence" — a form of clemency that wouldn't erase his conviction but would restore civil rights like voting and jury service, and remove barriers to licensing, employment, and housing once he's out. Lummis and Gallego introduced their resolution nine days later, on June 17. The full Senate didn't vote until July 15.

A federal court rejected Bankman-Fried's appeal in June 2026, according to Bitcoin Foundation. Bankman-Fried, now 34, continues to argue that FTX was solvent and that his sentence was unfair. A jury contradicted that claim in November 2023 when it convicted him on seven counts, including wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering conspiracy.

The underlying fraud

FTX collapsed in November 2022 after it came out that customer deposits had been funneled into Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried's separate trading firm. FTX customers lost more than $8 billion, according to Crypto Briefing. Prosecutors called it one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history.

Bankman-Fried moved billions in customer money to Alameda, which used it for trades, venture investments, political donations, and real estate in the Bahamas, according to Bitcoin Magazine. FTX's own software exempted Alameda from the risk checks applied to every other customer account. He was convicted in November 2023 and sentenced to 25 years in March 2024. He isn't eligible for release until around 2044.

Two of his top lieutenants, Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, cooperated with prosecutors and received far lighter sentences, according to Crypto Briefing.

Trump's actual position

Trump already said no. "I wouldn't want to get involved in such high-profile cases," he said in a January interview, according to Bitcoin Foundation. Bitcoin Magazine and Crypto Briefing both confirm Trump has stated he has no intention of pardoning Bankman-Fried.

The Senate vote doesn't stop Trump from doing something he was planning to do. It gives him public cover for a decision he'd apparently already made. Bitcoin Foundation put it plainly: the resolution "will likely weaken" the position of Bankman-Fried's mother, Barbara Fried, who has reportedly hired Republican consultants and lobbied the administration for her son's release.

Trump has shown he's willing to use his pardon power on crypto-world figures. He's pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, and BitMEX's co-founders during his second term, according to Bitcoin Foundation and Bitcoin Magazine. That track record is exactly why Bankman-Fried's legal team likely bet a pardon request was worth filing. It just didn't work, and now 100 senators are on record saying it shouldn't.

Nothing stops Trump from reversing course later in his term if he chooses to. The resolution has no enforcement mechanism. If Trump ever does grant clemency to Bankman-Fried, the Senate's unanimous vote would carry no legal weight to block it. It would remain, as Crypto Briefing described it, a strongly worded letter with 100 signatures.