The beleaguered crypto billionaire was hobnobbing in the White House just six months ago

A cryptocurrency billionaire facing federal investigation for mishandling client funds held high-level meetings at the White House just months ago as Congress debated how to regulate his company — and just weeks before he pledged to donate up to $1 billion to the Democrats ahead of the midterm campaign.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the owner of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, met on April 22 and May 12 with top Biden adviser Steve Ricchetti, according to White House visit logs reviewed by Washington Free Beacon. At the time, FTX lobbied Congress and federal agencies to shape the regulation of the crypto industry.

The meetings are likely to raise questions about the extent to which Bankman-Fried used the promise of political donations to pressure Democrats to help his firm. FTX is on the brink of insolvency after announcing that it could not fulfill its customers’ withdrawal requests due to a lack of funds. Bankman-Fried lost almost all of its $16 billion fortune in the liquidity crisis. And his problems could get worse. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are investigating whether FTX mishandled customer deposits to prop up the 30-year-old founder’s hedge fund, Alameda Research, according to Bloomberg News.

It’s a remarkable fall for Bankman-Fried, who has emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s biggest campaign donors. He gave more than $5 million to Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, and has given millions more this cycle to the Democratic Party. In early May, between her first two visits to the White House, Bankman-Fried distributed $865,000 to the DNC, according to the Federal Election Commission. Earlier, in March, he cut three checks totaling $66,500 to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, and later in June, he sent $250,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

He said in June, weeks after his last meeting at the White House, that he could give up to $1 billion to support Democrats in the midterms, though he backed away from that pledge in September.

Amidst the political spending, Bankman-Fried has led an aggressive lobbying campaign in Washington related to cryptocurrency regulation. He met with Ricchetti, the White House counsel, on April 22 and May 12, according to visit logs. He met on May 13 with Charlotte Butash, a political adviser to the White House deputy chief of staff.

Bankman-Fried was accompanied in some of the meetings by Mark Wetjen, head of policy and regulatory strategy at FTX, who served as commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under former President Barack Obama. Eliora Katz, FTX’s chief lobbyist, also attended the meetings, but did not mention White House lobbying in disclosures filed with Congress.

Bankman-Fried’s meetings came weeks after White House officials met with his brother, who heads the billionaire’s political operations. Gabe Bankman-Fried visited the White House on March 7 with Jenna Narayanan, a Democratic strategist who once worked for Tom Steyer and the Democracy Alliance, a network of wealthy liberal donors who fund left-wing causes. Gabe also attended the May 13 meeting with his brother and FTX’s lobbyists.

Bankman-Fried has made no secret of her plans to influence politicians. He told former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci in an interview last month that he has traveled to Washington, DC, “every two or three weeks for the past year” to lobby for cryptocurrency regulations. Leaving out the fact that he had donated significant amounts of money to the lawmakers he lobbied, Bankman-Fried said he was pleasantly surprised by the progress he had made.

“We have been working with Congress to draft legislation that would codify that there is a license for these assets. I’m actually surprisingly optimistic that it will actually happen,” he said.

Bankman-Fried has lobbied for a bill proposed by Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.) that would put the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in charge of crypto regulation. Bankman-Fried donated $5,800 to Stabenow’s campaign in February, and $20,800 to her joint fundraising committee in January. Bankman-Fried contributed to other Democratic members of the committee amid his lobbying campaign. He sent a total of $31,000 to campaigns and joint fundraising committees linked to Sens. Cory Booker (D., NJ), Tina Smith (D., Minn.), Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D. , NY) from October 2021 to June.

Bankman-Fried also contributed to the top Republicans on the Senate Agriculture Committee. The crypto billionaire gave $5,800 each to ranking member John Boozman (R., Ark.) and Sen. John Hoeven (R., ND) in January and June, respectively.

Bankman-Fried’s competitors in the crypto space have long been suspicious of his lobbying efforts and his claims to want federal oversight and regulation of the crypto market.

Yaël Ossowski, a cryptocurrency watchdog at the Consumer Choice Center, warned lawmakers in late October that Bankman-Fried was trying to out-regulate its smaller competitors.

Others have expressed skepticism that Bankman-Fried is pushing to have the Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversee cryptocurrency regulation instead of the Securities Exchange Commission, which has stronger enforcement powers and a much larger budget.

FTX and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.