Yahoo Finance Top Democrat Urges Sam Bankman-Fried to Appear in Front of Congress Next Wednesday
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If you've been watching the political dance between House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters and ex-FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried about testifying before her Congress, it's hard to say which one thinks the other is dumber.
Rep. Waters has gotten some flak for being too polite or too naive in her live-on-Twitter negotiations to get Sam Bankman-Fried to leave The Bahamas to answer questions from her Committee live in Washington, D.C. next Wednesday.
The California Democrat's Committee is investigating the collapse into bankruptcy of his FTX Exchange and Alameda Research trading firm — which allegedly "borrowed" and lost up to $10 billion of FTX customers' money.
The opening gambit of her Twitter invitation to Bankman-Fried read:
On top of what a lot of people in the crypto community felt were puff pieces by the mainstream media outlets interviewing Bankman-Fried, praising his candor drew criticism, ranging from angry comments about his large political donations to more set-the-record-straight admonitions.
Blockchain Association counsel Jake Chervinsky thanked Rep. Waters for holding the hearing, then said:
Brian Armstrong, CEO of crypto exchange Coinbase had this to say:
In the event, Bankman-Fried demurred, responding to Rep. Waters with the line he's been pushing in his "I'm an Idiot, Not a Crook" interview tour, claiming utter ignorance of what was going on. He said:
In earlier interviews with the New York Times, Good Morning America and the Wall Street Journal, Bankman-Fried has said his loss of access to FTX and Alameda records when he stepped down as CEO has made it hard for him to figure out what had happened.
Which led Rep. Waters to push a little harder:
Which, again, doesn't necessarily suggest he did anything wrong. But it's not stroking his ego, either.
Still, Bankman-Fried's refusal can reasonably be read two ways beyond buying into his narrative. One, he knows that the consequences of lying to the New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin and Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos are vastly different than lying under oath to Congress, and he's trying weasel out of it without having to look like he doesn't want to spend two hours quoting the Fifth Amendment. Or two, he thinks she and the rest of the committee are idiots.
It's worth noting that Chervinsky said he sees a "vast" perception gap between the crypto community and the rest of the public. He said:
As for Rep. Waters, look back at her opening statement when Meta (then Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified about his Libra stablecoin project in 2019:
If Bankman-Fried doesn't agree to testify, Rep. Waters — and likely the rest of the committee — will become less polite. Which is nothing compared to what he'll hear on Dec. 13, whether he's in Washington, D.C., or Nassau.
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