Trump already said no.
In January, he told the New York Times he had "no intention" of pardoning Sam Bankman-Fried. The FTX founder asked anyway.
Bankman-Fried filed a formal request for a pardon. It now shows up on the website of the Justice Department's pardon office.
The filing is dated 2026. No decision has come yet.
A pardon would wipe out his conviction. He filed the standard kind of pardon request, which is now logged by the DOJ.
Bloomberg broke the story first. What stands out is how he asked, not just that he asked.
Most people Trump has pardoned this term skipped the formal step. They never filed with the pardon office at all.
So going by the book is rare here. It's like mailing in a job form when everyone else got hired over the phone.
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A pardon is fully the president's call. No judge or jury gets a vote.
The pardon office reviews requests and sends advice to the president. He can follow that advice or toss it.
Past presidents leaned on that advice a lot. Trump has often skipped it and acted on his own.
That's why the filing may not mean much. Trump can say yes or no for any reason he likes.
Bankman-Fried is serving 25 years. He was sentenced in 2024 after a jury found him guilty of fraud and money laundering.
The fraud ran through FTX and a sister trading firm, Alameda Research. He misused billions of dollars in customer money.
FTX was a crypto exchange, a place to buy and sell coins like Bitcoin. It was once one of the biggest in the world.
At its peak, FTX was worth tens of billions of dollars. Its fall became one of the biggest fraud cases in crypto.
Then it broke apart in late 2022 and wiped out customer funds. The crash shook trust across the whole crypto market.
In the bankruptcy that followed, FTX began paying many customers back. That has not changed his sentence.
He is locked up at a federal prison. His earliest release is still years away.
Before the fall, he was also a major political donor. His parents, both Stanford law professors, have reached out to people close to Trump, per reports.
Trump has been busy with clemency this term. He has granted 147 pardons and shortened sentences so far.
Many went to white-collar cases. An NBC News review found more than half of his personal pardons went to people guilty of crimes like money laundering and wire fraud.
He has also pardoned several people who gave large sums to his campaigns. His first term leaned the same way, with 238 pardons and shortened sentences in all.
A pardon here would be a big moment for crypto. Bankman-Fried once helped lead the industry he is now jailed for defrauding.
The White House would not comment. The Justice Department did not reply.
So the request just sits there. It was filed by a man the president has already turned down in writing.
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