Elon Musk claims Sam Bankman-Fried spent more than $1 billion on U.S. election

Tesla founder Elon Musk claims that Sam Bankman-Fried contributed more than $1 billion to the Democratic elections. He wonders why SBF is hiding the precise figures and, if the sum is accurate, where the remaining funds went.

That’s just the publicly disclosed number. His actual support of Dem elections is probably over $1B. The money went somewhere, so where did it go?

– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 3, 2022

Sam Bankman-Fried contributed $40 million

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, and other members of his team became one of the largest political donors in the United States within 18 months of emerging from relative obscurity in Washington.

However, a nonpartisan organization that tracks campaign donations confirms that Sam Bankman-Fried personally gave $40 million to politicians and political action committees before the 2022 midterm elections, mostly to Democrats and liberal-leaning groups.

At the time, Sam Bankman-Fried was the second largest overall donor to Democrats during the election cycle, behind George Soros. Mr. Salame was the 11th largest donor to the Republican Party.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s first live public appearance

On November 30, Sam Bankman-Fried made his first live public appearance since the demise of FTX, answering questions at the DealBook Summit in New York. During the interview, Sam Bankman-Fried stated that he had “unknowingly mixed up the assets” between Alameda and FTX’s accounts receivable.

He shared:

“I mixed funds without knowing it. […] I was frankly surprised by the size of Alameda’s position, which indicates another lack of oversight on my part and the failure to appoint someone to deal primarily with this.”

Sam Bankman-Fried v. Elon Musk

Elon Musk has previously denied that disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried invested $100 million in Musk’s Twitter buyout.

False. Also, Business is still not a real publication. Just give up.

– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2022

At that time, text messages made public as part of Twitter’s lawsuit to force Elon Musk to accept its buyout offer revealed that Sam Bankman-Fried and Elon Musk had been introduced in March by Will MacAskill, an Oxford philosophy professor who had reportedly advised SBF on the principles of the “effective altruism“.

Sam Bankman-Fried said at the time that he was “happy to discuss Twitter (or anything else at any time!)” with Tesla founder Elon Musk.