Sam Bankman-Fried loses appeal of fraud conviction in FTX case
ormer FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried arrives for a bail hearing at Manhattan Federal Court on August 11, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the cryptocurrency fraud conviction of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
The opinion came the same week Bankman-Fried submitted his application for a presidential pardon.
Bankman-Fried was convicted of masterminding one of the largest financial frauds in history stemming from the collapse of the crypto-exchange FTX. He is serving a 25-year prison sentence.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
An exterior view of the Hennepin County Public Safety Facility where suspect Vance Boelter is being held before court appearances on June 16, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Steven Garcia/Getty Images)
John and Yvette Hoffman sat in the front row of the federal courtroom as Boelter admitted to firing multiple shots at them, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
When Boelter admitted that he shot Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman several times and then put a gun to her head and killed her, sobs broke out in the courtroom, KSTP reported.
Boelter initially pleaded not guilty to six federal counts, including murder, attempted murder and stalking.
This week, a Justice Department spokesperson said federal prosecutors would not seek the death penalty because a federal judge ruled earlier this year in an unrelated murder case that interstate stalking charges do not rise to the level to support a capital crime.
The crimes unfolded on June 14, 2025, when Boelter allegedly disguised himself as a police officer and fatally shot Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at their home.
That same day he allegedly drove to the home of Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and shot the lawmaker and his wife, Yvette, and attempted to shoot their daughter, according to prosecutors.
Following the attacks, police said they found a notebook in Boelter’s abandoned, fake police car containing a list of elected officials who investigators suspect were targeted in a plot that the Minnesota U.S. attorney described at the time as the “stuff of nightmares.”
Prosecutors said Boelter traveled to the homes of two other state lawmakers only to find no one at those locations.
Boelter has also pleaded not guilty to state charges of murder and attempted murder.
Doug Band, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, is seen with Ghislaine Maxwell in this undated photo. (U.S. Justice Department)
(WASHINGTON) — Doug Band, a former close adviser to President Bill Clinton, is on Capitol Hill Tuesday for a closed-door interview with the congressional committee probing the government’s investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Band, who began his tenure with Clinton as an intern in the mid-1990s, is expected to be questioned by the House Oversight Committee about the former president’s interactions and travels with Epstein in the years after Clinton left the Oval Office in 2001.
Often described as one of the architects of Clinton’s post-presidential endeavors, including the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative, Band can also expect to be pressed about his own communications with Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, which were made public earlier this year by the Justice Department as part of the release of files mandated by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
“We know that Mr. Band set up several meetings between Clinton and Epstein,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., told reporters on his way into the hearing room. “We know Mr. Band accompanied Mr. Clinton on several flights on Epstein’s jet. We know that Mr. Band also had a lot of communication with Ms. Maxwell, so that’ll be a topic of several questions.”
Emails between Band and Maxwell included talk of meetings with Epstein and numerous exchanges containing suggestive innuendo and cheeky nicknames for each other like “babycakes” and “booboo,” according to files released by the DOJ.
The bulk of the messages were exchanged between 2001-2004, before Epstein first faced criminal charges in Florida in 2006.
Band, 54, has not been accused of any wrongdoing. An attorney expected to accompany Band to the interview did not reply to a message seeking comment in advance of Band’s appearance in Washington, D.C.
Earlier this year, Band told The New York Times that his messages with Maxwell occurred when he was in his 20s and unmarried — and he denied any romantic involvement with Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex-trafficking and other offenses.
“There was absolutely no physical relationship that occurred between us. Ever,” Band said in a statement to the Times, in which he referred to Maxwell as “a monster.”
The committee is also expected to query Band about his explosive claim — reported by Vanity Fair in 2020 — that the former president had visited Epstein’s private estate in the U.S. Virgin Islands in early 2003. The article, which centered on Band’s contentious split with the Clintons, did not detail how Band knew about the purported island trip or if he had any evidence to bolster his claim.
Records created by Epstein’s pilots made public through civil litigation show Clinton — and an entourage that typically included Band — aboard Epstein’s plane on more than two dozen flight legs in 2002-03, but none of those flights went to the island, according to the pilot’s logs. Clinton, Epstein and Maxwell have all denied that the former president had ever been to Little St. James, as Epstein’s island was known.
“He never, absolutely never went. And I can be sure of that because there’s no way he would have gone,” Maxwell told then then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in a recorded interview last summer.
“I’ve never been to that island,” Clinton said in his own interview with the Oversight Committee in February.
The former president has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection to his association with Epstein. He has said he stopped interacting with Epstein before any criminal allegations surfaced and has denied knowledge of any of Epstein’s crimes.
Clinton told the committee that he and Band were once “close,” and that Band had been one of the people he tasked to “operationalize” plans to develop the Clinton Global Initiative in his early post-presidency years.
“He worked for me for years,” Clinton said. “[H]e arranged airplane flights and things like that and was doing work on the first Clinton Global Initiative in 2005. And I know that he knew both Epstein and Maxwell. I do not know to what extent he was in contact with them.”
In her interview with Blanche, Maxwell said she began spending time with Clinton after he left the White House in 2001, as he was forging his post-presidential path through the establishment of the Clinton Foundation and, later, the Clinton Global Initiative.
“I was part of the beginning process of the Clinton Global Initiative. And that was something that I helped with and that was me, and Epstein may have helped me help them,” she said, according to a transcript of the July 2025 interview.
“I started spending time with the former president and with Doug and his team,” Maxwell said. “I had no purpose, really, other than I had — obviously offered something. I don’t know, ideas.”
Band’s appearance before the Oversight Committee is voluntary and will not be recorded. The committee has typically released transcripts of interviews after they are reviewed for accuracy and redacted to remove any potential references to alleged victims.
In recent weeks the committee has heard from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and two of Epstein’s former assistants, Sarah Kellen and Lesley Groff.
Later this summer, interviews are scheduled with former Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, former Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz, and Epstein’s former private banker at JPMorgan Chase, Jes Staley.
Comer has indicated that a report on the investigation’s findings will be issued by the end of the year.
Vice President JD Vance appears on ABC News’ “Good Morning America” on Monday, June 15, 2026. (ABC News)
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President JD Vance on Monday spoke about the settlement that would extend the U.S.-Iran ceasefire and pave the way for 60 days of technical negotiations to end the war, saying it has been signed “digitally.”
Vance said the agreement marked a moment in which Iran has a “two-path” option.
“On the one hand, if they continue to try to rebuild their nuclear program, this deal ensures they will never have the resources to do that,” Vance told ABC News’ “Good Morning America” in an interview on Monday. “On the other hand, if the Iranians are willing to give a long-term commitment — along with proper verification — to giving up that nuclear weapon, we’re willing to welcome them into the world economy, to lift some sanctions and to turn over a new leaf in that relationship.”
Iranian officials have long publicly maintained that the country’s nuclear program operates only for civilian purposes, although Western officials have said their uranium enrichment has gone beyond what would be needed for civilian use. Iran has also said it does not have ambitions to create nuclear weapons, a claim that American officials have disputed.
Vance’s interview followed a Sunday social media post from President Donald Trump, who said the United States and Iran reached an agreement for a 60-day ceasefire in the conflict that began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on Feb. 28.
Vance said that the deal had already been digitally signed by parties, but also maintained that there would be a signing ceremony on Friday — though it’s unclear exactly what the Friday signing will mean if the deal has already been signed digitally. The vice president did say that the full text of the agreement would be released at some point this week and that negotiations were expected to continue.
The exact contents of the agreement is still unclear, and he remained vague about what specifics were in the the text of the already-signed agreement.
When pressed by “Good Morning America” Anchor George Stephanopoulos about whether this deal was the president going back on promises that Iran would need to provide “unconditional surrender,” Vance responded that “what this deal fundamentally does is it reopens the Straits of Hormuz.”
“You see, oil prices have already come down substantially just in the last 24 hours,” Vance added.
Vance also said that the deal includes provisions that Iran will stop funding terror groups, though he did not expand on what exactly that means.
As a potential deal was reportedly coming together on Friday, Vance took to social media to push back on what he described as “fake information” about the potential terms, which he said were expected to include financial incentives for Iran. Vance said funds would not be released to Iran “for simply signing a deal or attending a meeting.”
Vance also said that since the deal was digitally signed on Sunday, no money for Iran has been released, “and that won’t change, George,” Vance said.
Vance on Monday said forward momentum for the deal would hinge on Iranian officials “doing the right thing,” including allowing for some form of verification to show that Iran is not working toward building a nuclear weapon.
“This is fundamentally a win-win for the American people,” Vance said. “What the president has said is he wants it to be a win for the Iranian people as well. But that requires some real trust building and some real positive conduct from the Iranian political system.”
“We’re going to see if that happens,” he added. “If it does, they’re absolutely going to find the president of United States and the entire team a willing partner, to make their country more prosperous.”
Stephanopoulos pressed Vance about whether Israel’s comments that they are not party to the agreement amid their continued hostilities in Lebanon, asking Vance whether that might complicate the peace settlement.
“Well, George, everything’s going to complicate the deal, as you know, in this region of the world, even a ceasefire, sometimes they’re a little bit dirty,” Vance said. “It goes from shooting a lot to shooting a little to shooting not at all. But what we fundamentally believe is that this is going to be a good deal for the people of Israel, for the people of the Gulf, the people of America, and again, potentially for the people of Iran as well.”
A landmark nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, followed two years of negotiations. It imposed restrictions on Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program in exchange for sanctions relief. Iran, in that 2015 deal, agreed to international monitoring and to keeping its nuclear program “solely for peaceful purposes,” according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
Trump withdrew the U.S. that deal in 2018, during his first term.
“There are all of these ways I could explain the ways this deal is fundamentally better for the American people than the JCPOA,” Vance said on Monday. “But the fundamental difference is that the Gulf Coast coalition, our Arab partners in the region, they hated the JCPOA, because they felt that it emboldened Iran to be a bad actor. They love this deal because they feel that it’s going to create a totally new dynamic in the Middle East.”
ABC News’ Meredith Deliso contributed to this report.
