A Couple Of I-Told-You-Sos

My wife and I have a soft spot for Dan Abrams. Although he appears to be quite wealthy and fully tied in to the Democrat-media establishment, he also hosted Live PD and appears to have invested a great deal of his credibility in restoring a clone of that show to the air after Live PD was canceled following the George Floyd riots. He also hosts the new show, On Patrol Live, where his persona is down-to-earth, sympathetic to the day-to-day jobs of uniformed police, and committed to maintaining public understanding of law enforcement.

Thus it wasn't a surprise to us that in a segment of another of his shows, Dan Abrams Live, he raises a question I've raised here, the potential liability of Sam Bankman-Fried's parents in the FTX scandal. Whether due to obtuseness or a wish to cover up for culpability within David Brooks's New American Upper Class, other media hasn't mentioned this issue, but now Abrams has. He notes that Sam himself is now in custody in the Bahamas,

but -- what about his parents?

I'm surprised so few are asking whether either of them could be in legal jeapordy. Fried's father, Joseph Bankman, works as a tax law professor at Stanford, though he's announced he won't be teaching at the university next year. The father Bankman worked for FTX for almost a year, deeply involved in the business in its early days, he helped the company recruit its first lawyers, last year he joined the FTX staff in meetings on Capitol Hill, he consulted FTX employees on tax matters, and he also had a large focus on FTX's charitable operations.

His mom, Barbara Fried, retired from teaching at Stanford, was head of a political advocacy network called Mind the Gap, which she helped start, to support Democratic campaigns and causes. Her son was among the donors for the network. Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried and his parents bought real estate together in the Bahamas worth $121 million.

Dan Abrams is neither QAnon nor Tucker Carlson. I think it's commendable that he's picking up this story when so many on all parts of the spectrum seem to think it's either too sensitive or too much work to cover.

But 0n the subject of Prof Bankman and his efforts on behalf of FTX, there was an intriguing data item in this week's House hearings on the case:

[Republican Representative] Huizenga turned then towards family involvement in the case, enquiring whether SBF’s father, Mr. Bankman received payment from FTX. Ray confirmed that “the family did receive payments.”

Huizenga met with SBF on Dec. 8, 2021, accompanied by his father, Mr. Bankman. Noting that SBF was 15 minutes late to that meeting, Huizenga said: “I asked and focused on what types of regulation he was under his engagemnet with regulators and how that affected FTX but it seems that there’s a lot more to uncover here.”

As we saw in the photo I ran here of Prof Bankman escorting Sam in a meeting with Congresswoman Waters, it appears that on matters of importance, like meetings with politicians, Prof Bankman seems to have been the prime mover and major negotiator; Sam was little more than a ventriloquist's dummy.

On a separate issue, days after I first raised the matter, a story appears in right-wing media, Questions Arise About How Disgraced ‘Non-Binary’ Biden Official Received Top Clearance.

Following the firing of Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear official Sam Brinton, critics have begun questioning as to how someone with a dodgy past and criminal tendencies managed to receive the highest level of security clearance in the federal government.

The whole question of security clearance has never been adequately investigated. The 1970s Falcon and the Snowman scandal involved a "connected" and privileged kid who got together with a drug-addled pal to pass US secrets to the Soviet Union. The whole plot was facilitated by the complacency and negligence of the corporate and government security system, within which I worked for much of my tech career. Problems in that story like someone lying dead drunk on the floor of a top-secret vault were the sort of thing I saw myself with some regularity.

Whatever comes of the Brinton fiasco, it will be nothing new, and it will result in no real reforms.