Bankman Freed and some of his associates donated to about a third of Congress.

So, you know, very quickly a lot of money went out to both parties, some of it in secret,

some of it through his lieutenants like Ryan Salem, who's an executive at his company and did a lot of the sort of conservative giving.

But it was, you know, he was rather open in some ways that he was looking for influence and that he saw a good

return on investment with political giving. He wasn't sort of shy about that. Of

course he kept some of the more illegal actions in a secret or in reserve, but this is someone who was quite openly, you could argue manipulating the political process or at least trying to influence it. I mean, he was Capitol Hill all the time he was meeting with people and I would talk to folks once in a while on Capitol Hill or went down there in the summer of 2022 and I wrote later in the book that I worked on that it seemed like the ghost of Sam McP freed

had perceived us into every room.

I mean, even some of the Democrats, I mean, we weren't talking with everyone in Capitol

Hill, but some of the Democrats, for example, were like, this was before FTX went down, but they said, like, look, we'd like to have more of some opposition to crypto or some consumer protection, things like that, but there's just no united front among the Democrats,

certainly back that, certainly a year ago.

There was rather just, you know, the sense that his money

was really corrupting the process and buying loyalty.