Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years for fraud relating to cryptocurrency.
Column By Mike Bibb
Former President Donald J. Trump, 77, is facing a slew of allegations, fines, and possible prison time. He has been under constant legal harassment since announcing his intention to run for office in 2016.
To my knowledge, none of the accusations involve multi-billion-dollar fraud scams.
Crypto currency con artist, Sam Bankman-Fried, 32, committed over $10 billion in various illicit schemes. He was recently convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
If Trump is found guilty of the approximately 90 charges against him, he could face over 70 decades behind bars. Meaning his corpse will have long turned into dust before being eligible for parole.
Bankman-Fried, on the other hand, will only be 57 – if he serves the full sentence. With an early parole, or reduction in time, Sam could be released sooner to conjure new tricks on an unsuspecting public.
The advance in technology 15-20 years from now will, undoubtedly, open whole new vistas in criminal enterprises.
Sam proved – once again – that robbery by gun is for amateurs. The big money is made from computer manipulations, celebrity endorsements, Super Bowl commercials, clever deceptions, and lying with a straight face.
He may be 45 years younger than Trump, but Sam is an exceptionally clever guy. Even a genius in a sort of villainous way.
A 25-year incarceration to settle a $10 billion crime works out to about $400 million per year. Not bad wages for an inmate.
At one point in his case’s proceeding, a probation officer suggested Sam serve 100 years in prison.
This was quickly countered by Sam’s attorney, insisting such a lengthy time would be “grotesque” and “barbaric.”
Yet, Trump is facing over 700 combined years and no government prosecutor has suggested a seven-century jail confinement is grotesque and barbaric.
Insinuating, a tried and proven fraudster – with the help of a few of his equally crooked associates — whose illegal actions adversely impacted many lives and fortunes, is treated more leniently by our judicial system than an ex-president, despised by a liberal media and political party overseeing state and federal departments of justice.
Not surprisingly, Trump is often referred to as “A threat to our democracy” and a latter-day Hitler, while Sam is considered nothing more than an eccentric high-tech thief, who drifted off-course from his original intentions of helping to fashion the newly emerging crypto market.
Further evidence of this peculiarity occurred when Trump was ordered to pay a $454 million fine before he could appeal his case.
An appeals court later reduced the figure to about $175 million.
Big Friggin’ Deal. An inconceivable court fine that was originally in the hundreds of millions of dollars was marked down to an amount that was still in the hundreds of millions of dollars to enable Trump to appeal a dopey decision in a fabricated case that had no victims.
An obvious ploy to project some sense of judicial integrity into this quagmire. But really, is slicing off a few hundred million dollars from a half-a-billion-dollar fine change anything? Does it make the trial and judgment any fairer?
Apparently, the U.S. Constitution’s 8th Amendment no “excessive fines” and “cruel and unusual punishments inflicted” works for Sam, but not Donald.
Of course, as we’ve seen nearly every time these kinds of stunts are pulled by the Left, Trump’s popularity and poll numbers increase.
Proving once again, the timeless wisdom of the ancient Chinese political science professor Morley Ling Wang’s admonition – “You just can’t fix stupid!”
Which, I believe, is also inscribed above the entrance to the Supreme Court. Or, should be.
The opinons expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
