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Comment by aetherson | Hacker News Reader

SBF was the second largest individual donor to the Democrats in 2022, giving about $40M this election cycle. I presume that the vast majority of that money is gone, spent. I don't realistically know how people could give it back.

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It wasn't even directly given to Democrats. Most of it ($27m) was spent via the Protect Our Future PAC which he founded and controlled and was supposedly being used to fund politicians who would back his longtermism goals. https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs...

The same way money is often repaid: take it from future income.

The Democratic committees raised $853M in the 2022 election cycle, compared to $805M for the Republicans. If they had to deduct $50M next cycle to account for the illegitimate funds, it wouldn’t ruin them.

This sometimes does happen.

Elizabeth Warren gave back money she got from the Sackler family (owners of Purdue Pharma and primary operators of the opioid crisis).

The Sacklers donated mostly to Republicans, but AFAIK none of them returned the money.

Also a similar magnitude donor to the GOP by the way, though about 30MM rather than 40 IIRC.

It's interesting and encouraging if $40MM is a major donation. Billions were spent on the midterm; if $40MM is "major" than most of the money came from small donations, which is how it should be.

> Also a similar magnitude donor to the GOP by the way, though about 30MM rather than 40 IIRC.

Source? opensecrets lists SBF as having donated $36M to democrats and only $240k to republicans.

https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/biggest-donor...

I don't recall hearing that SBF donated large amounts to the Republicans, but I do recall that someone else at FTX did, and indeed there's ~$20m in the list if you search for FTX - as well as a third exec donating a further $8m to the democrats: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/biggest-donor...

Sorry, I meant $26MM from another FTX exec. I was thinking of FTX rather than SBF specifically and should not have written it that way.

Because of the comments I won't edit my post (still have time) but issue this correction instead.

Or who they'd give it back to (there's a long line of creditors owed way more than $40m, and quite a few of them had far more responsibility and ability to do due diligence than the politicians)

One thing to expect political parties and nonprofits to reject donations up front from unpalatable people, another for them to bail out ripped off speculators with long since spent donations.

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