Former FTX executive Ryan Salame accuses Biden DOJ of political persecution

Ryan Salame, the former FTX executive serving a 90-month sentence for his role in the 2022 collapse of the FTX exchange, has fired volleys at the Biden administration’s Department of Justice. According to Salame, the prosecutors in his case engaged in political persecution and coerced his guilty plea by threatening his pregnant fiancée.

The former FTX executive has now gone on X to narrate his side of the DOJ’s prosecution of his case. Salame alleged that the DOJ “picked people, not crimes,” and gave those involved in FTX’s campaign finance scheme who identified as Democrats “a free pass of no jail time or no indictment.”

The 32-year-old, currently serving a 90-month sentence at FCI Cumberland in Maryland, stated, “Biden’s DOJ went to extreme lengths to bury and ignore exculpatory evidence and silence witnesses. You don’t do that if you have a strong case. You don’t threaten people’s loved ones to force guilty pleas.”

He wrote, “They held a gun on my wife while she was pregnant – both literally and figuratively,” Salame wrote, referring to his fiancée Michelle Bond.

Ex-FTX executive claims political persecution

Salame’s 90-month prison sentence, handed down by Judge Lewis Kaplan, was more than the five to seven years prosecutors had recommended.

His allegations center on claims that he was singled out for prosecution because of his Republican political donations. Salame contributed $23 million to mostly Republican candidates and groups during the midterm elections, making him an outlier in Bankman-Fried’s predominantly Democratic-leaning inner circle.

In his post, Salame claimed he provided evidence that his loans from Alameda Research were properly documented by lawyers and that he consulted tax advisers to ensure compliance. He questioned why prosecutors would target him as a straw donor when his net worth was in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Did Biden DOJ threaten Salame’s family?

The most serious allegation concerns prosecutor Danielle Sassoon’s handling of plea negotiations. Salame wrote, “When I said I was going to take my case to trial the corrupt prosecutor Danielle Sassoon came back and said they’d drop an investigation into my pregnant wife if I pled guilty.”

He alleged that “Sassoon held herself out as an ethical representative of the U.S. JUSTICE department and has since gone further and lied about it under oath,” adding that the department proceeded to charge Bond anyway, despite his cooperation.

Bond was indicted in August 2024 over campaign finance violations related to her unsuccessful 2022 congressional run. The indictment alleged that she received a $400,000 payment from FTX, arranged by Salame, and then lied to “Congress and others to cover it all up,” according to the Department of Justice press release.

Bond, who has pleaded not guilty, is fighting the charges on the grounds that prosecutors reneged on their agreement, claiming Sassoon got her a plea from Salame “by stealth and deception.”

However, at a November 2025 hearing, Sassoon reportedly said that she’s not in the business of “gotcha” or tricking people into pleading guilty.

She testified that she believed Salame’s lawyers used the suggestion of a deal as a “negotiating tactic” and insisted she never promised immunity for Bond. She told the court that if the lawyers truly believed prosecutors had made such a promise, “they would have made it directly to me.”

High praise for Trump DOJ

Salame praised the current administration, stating, “The Trump Justice Department has put out a policy statement to ensure that this type of lawfare doesn’t happen again, but many remain in prison under it.”

The case brings to light the political undertone that also arose from the FTX collapse, which saw Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison for orchestrating one of the largest financial frauds in American history.

While other cooperating witnesses received lighter treatment, Salame’s decision not to testify against his former boss may have resulted in the harshest sentence among the executive team.

“I tried to save my family from the monsters under Biden’s corrupt justice system that I thought only existed in banana republics,” Salame wrote. “I may be in prison, but I hold my head high!”

The DOJ is yet to comment on Salame’s allegations.

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