Tucker Carlson’s jailhouse interview with Sam Bankman-Fried came as a surprise to everyone — including the crypto scammer’s crisis manager.
Mark Botnick, who had represented Bankman-Fried since the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX in November 2022, resigned from his role on Thursday after learning of the interview.
He told Business Insider that he had no involvement in planning the interview with Carlson, which was posted to social media outlets on Thursday afternoon — Bankman-Fried’s 33rd birthday.
“As of today, I no longer represent SBF,” Botnick told BI.
Bankman-Fried is serving a 25-year prison sentence after a jury found him guilty in 2023 of an $11 billion fraud and money-laundering scheme through his cryptocurrency exchange, FTX.
Botnick is a seasoned public relations operative, having worked on several political campaigns for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He represented Bankman-Fried through the turbulent waves of his criminal case, including when he violated the terms of his bail and was jailed ahead of his trial due to witness tampering.
In recent weeks, Bankman-Fried has gone off-script. He posted messages on X offering advice on the Trump administration’s efforts to fire federal employees. Botnick told BI that he was not involved in those X posts and is unsure who posted them on his behalf.
Bankman-Fried’s conversations with journalists have gotten him in trouble before. His interviews with The Financial Times, Bloomberg News, and Vox were cited in his criminal trial as evidence of how he misled FTX investors and customers.
Botnick referred additional questions about Bankman-Fried to his criminal appeals attorney, Alexandra Shapiro, who didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
A representative for the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where Bankman-Fried is incarcerated, declined to comment on his interview with Carlson. A representative for Carlson’s media company didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The former crypto mogul — who once had an on-paper net worth of over $26 billion — has been fishing for a pardon from President Donald Trump, Bloomberg News reported.
Trump and Bankman-Fried may have some perceived enemies in common, although Bankman-Fried didn’t raise the issue with Carlson, a staunch Trump ally.
The federal judge who oversaw Bankman-Fried’s trial and sentenced him, Lewis Kaplan, also oversaw two cases that the writer E. Jean Carroll successfully brought against Trump. Danielle Sassoon, the lead prosecutor in Bankman-Fried’s criminal case, resigned as the acting head of the US Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York after refusing a demand from a Trump-appointed Justice Department official to drop charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Carlson raised the question of a potential pardon in the interview.
“If you are not pardoned, how old will you be when you get out?” he asked Bankman-Fried.
Bankman-Fried said he’ll be in his late 40s.
During FTX’s collapse, in 2022, Bankman-Fried had considered an interview with Carlson, a Fox News host at the time, to “come out as a republican” and rail “against the woke agenda” as a way to restore his reputation, he wrote in a Google Document that became public as part of his criminal case.
“Note: these are all random probably bad ideas that aren’t vetted,” Bankman-Fried wrote at the top of the document.
