Avenatti blasts – Michael Avenatti, Bankman-Fried’s former prison bunkmate, scolded the FTX founder on Monday—arguing he can’t seek a Trump pardon without admitting wrongdoing. Bankman-Fried, who is serving 25 years for stealing $8 billion from FTX customers, has said he would
Michael Avenatti didn’t wait for daylight to swing back at Sam Bankman-Fried.
On Monday, the controversial lawyer took to X to deliver a blunt message to his prison bunkmate: Bankman-Fried, the crypto defendant now serving a 25-year sentence, doesn’t deserve a presidential pardon because he has not accepted responsibility for what he did.
Avenatti wrote that he and Bankman-Fried argued “more than once about the same thing. ” specifically Bankman-Fried’s “refusal to accept ANY responsibility for what he did.” He said Bankman-Fried never admitted he’d done anything wrong—not even after Avenatti told him he could not “begin to redeem himself” without acknowledging the harm.
In Avenatti’s words, “You don’t earn a pardon when you can’t admit, even to yourself, that you did wrong.”
The timing wasn’t random. Avenatti’s post landed shortly after Bankman-Fried told Fox Business he would “absolutely” love a pardon from President Donald Trump. Bankman-Fried added that it would be “obviously” up to the president “not to me.”
Bankman-Fried is currently serving 25 years in prison for ripping off $8 billion worth of cryptocurrency from his FTX customers. He was convicted in 2022.
Avenatti’s remarks also leaned on his own experience in the criminal justice system. In the same year. Avenatti was convicted of cheating millions of dollars out of clients. ordered to pay back $7 million. and sentenced to 14 years in prison—later reduced to about 11 years. Avenatti described himself at the time as “deeply remorseful and contrite. ” saying “There is no doubt that all of them deserve much better. ” and adding: “I hope that someday they will accept my apologies and find it in their heart to forgive me.”.
His post comes amid fresh movement in his own sentence. Avenatti was also convicted for embezzling about $300,000 from Daniels in 2022. He was moved from federal prison to a halfway house in April and is expected to be released in 2028.
Taken together, Avenatti’s scolding leaves one issue hanging over Bankman-Fried’s pardon wish: in Avenatti’s telling, the question isn’t only what happened in court—it’s whether Bankman-Fried has ever acknowledged the wrongdoing in a way that could justify the extraordinary step of clemency.
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