Month: January 2025

A shocking discovery at a Minnesota garage sale has unveiled a potential $15 million masterpiece by Vincent van Gogh. The painting, purchased for a mere $50, could be one of hundreds of lost works by the iconic artist. This revelation has sent shockwaves through the art world, igniting debates about the authenticity of “lost” paintings and the potential for everyday Americans to stumble upon priceless treasures.

From Garage Sale to Art World Sensation

The painting, titled “Elimar,” depicts a fisherman with a pipe repairing a net. It was created in 1889 while van Gogh was in the Saint-Paul sanitarium in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France.

The LMI Group International spent four years authenticating the painting using advanced techniques. These methods included canvas weave analysis, pigment examination, and composition study.

“LMI Group’s data-based approach to verifying authorship of this painting represents a new standard of confidence for bringing to light unknown or forgotten works by important artists,” Lawrence M. Shindell, LMI Group’s chairman said in a statement.

Unraveling the Mystery

The painting features an egg-white temporary finish, a technique van Gogh used to protect his works. This detail adds credibility to the claim of authenticity.

A mathematical comparison of the “Elimar” inscription to van Gogh’s other signatures showed significant similarities. The letters in the name “Elimar” matched 94% with other letters in Van Gogh’s works.

The name “Elimar” is linked to a character from a novel by Hans Christian Andersen, a favorite author of Van Gogh. This connection further supports the painting’s potential authenticity.

Controversy and Skepticism

Despite the LMI Group’s findings, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has yet to attribute the painting to van Gogh. This hesitation has sparked debate within the art community.

An attempt to match DNA from a hair found in the canvas to van Gogh’s descendants was unsuccessful due to the hair’s degraded state. However, the hair belonged to a red-haired man, which aligns with van Gogh’s physical description.

“In his lifetime, van Gogh lost many works by giving them away to friends or being neglectful,” the LMI group said in a press release. “It is believed that nearly 300 paintings may have been lost, many during van Gogh’s time at Saint-Rémy.”

If authenticated as a Van Gogh, the painting could be worth up to $15 million. This potential windfall has raised questions about the preservation of cultural heritage and the role of private collectors in safeguarding important artworks.

Sources:

This Painting Bought at a Minnesota Garage Sale Is Actually a Van Gogh, Experts Say

$50 painting bought at garage sale may be a Van Gogh piece, experts say

The post Rare Van Gogh Masterpiece Found Hidden Among Flea Market Treasures appeared first on The Conservative Brief.

The 19-year-old healthcare worker who was dancing on multiple patient’s head has now been arrested

The post 19-Year-Old Georgia Healthcare Worker Arrested After Twerking on Disabled Patient appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Donald Trump is making a bold pitch to protect the United States Dollar.

The U.S. dollar is increasingly under threat as the global reserve currency due to rising debt and de-dollarisation efforts by the likes of China, Russia and other BRICS nations.

If the U.S. were to lose its status as the global reserve currency, this would likely lead to rising inflation, higher borrowing costs and a general loss of overall economic influence.

BRICS nations have floated the idea of creating their own alternative currency, a proposal that has gained significant traction in recent years.

However, Trump has no intention of letting this happen under his watch, as he explained in a post on Truth Social on Thursday evening.

He wrote:

The idea that the BRICS Countries are trying to move away from the Dollar, while we stand by and watch, is OVER.

We are going to require a commitment from these seemingly hostile Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs, and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. Economy.

They can go find another sucker Nation. There is no chance that BRICS will replace the U.S. Dollar in International Trade, or anywhere else, and any Country that tries should say hello to Tariffs, and goodbye to America!

Originally comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, BRICS expanded in 2024 by inviting Egypt, Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Ethiopia to join the organization with the aim of strengthening their economic and geopolitical influence.

Central to this expansion has been the idea of conducting trade in local currencies rather than the U.S. dollar, as well as expanding their control over global energy markets in order to gain greater influence of the U.S. and Europe.

Meanwhile, Trump’s tariff plans have already proven successful within his first in office.

Last weekend, he threatened to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on Colombia if the country’s communist president Gustavo Petro did not agree to accept deportation flights of illegal aliens.

After Petro initially pledged to impose retaliatory tariffs, he eventually backed down after realizing that Colombia was far more dependent on America than vice versa.

VICTORY: Colombia Agrees to “All of President Trump’s Terms” For Deportation Flights on Military Planes to Avoid Tariffs and Sanctions — Some Restrictions Still in Place Pending First Successful Immigrant Delivery

 

The post Trump Makes Bold Pitch to Protect The U.S. Dollar — Will Impose 100 Percent Tariffs on Countries Joining Alternative Reserve Currency appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Democrats and the media have scoffed at Trump’s talk of acquiring Greenland for the United States, but they may not be laughing for much longer.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was interviewed by Megyn Kelly this week and confirmed that Trump’s intentions are very real and that the acquisition of Greenland has nothing to do with gaining more land but is all about national security.

Rubio also did a great job of explaining Trump’s approach to the issue, with the mind of a strategic businessman rather than that of a politician.

The Daily Caller has more details:

Marco Rubio Tells Megyn Kelly That Trump’s Greenland Bid ‘Is Not A Joke’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told SiriusXM’s Megyn Kelly on Thursday during her show that President Donald Trump’s bid for Greenland is “not a joke.”…

“Well, I think President Trump, what he has said publicly is he wants to buy it. He wants to pay for it. How we worked on something like that, how something like that is approached, obviously is probably done better in the appropriate forms. A lot of this stuff is done publicly, and it’s not helpful because it puts the other side in a tough spot domestically,” Rubio said. “So those conversations are going to happen. But this is not a joke. What he is saying is pretty accurate.”

“This is not about acquiring land for the purpose of acquiring land. This is in our national interest, and it needs to be solved. President Trump has put out there what he intends to do, which is to purchase it. I wasn’t privy to that phone call, but I imagine the phone call went the way a lot of these phone calls go, and that is he just speaks bluntly and frankly with people,” Rubio added. “Ultimately I think diplomacy in many cases works better when you’re straightforward as opposed to using platitudes and language that translates to nothing.”

Watch the video below:

NEW: Secretary of State Marco Rubio says Trump is serious about acquiring Greenland, says his comments are “not a joke.”

The comments came after Trump had a fiery call with Denmark’s PM leaving Danish officials “utterly freaked out.”

“This is not a joke. This is not about… pic.twitter.com/63TRI1lXJX

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 31, 2025

Anyone who knows American history will recall that America’s purchase of Alaska in 1867 was initially mocked by detractors as ‘Seward’s Folly.’ Can you even imagine Alaska not being part of the United States today?

The post Secretary of State Marco Rubio Confirms Trump’s Interest in Acquiring Greenland: ‘This is Not a Joke’ (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

As if we did not already have enough to feel aggrieved about, there’s this: Nearly half of Americans (44 percent) feel neglected by advertisers. 

Who actually feels abandoned in this way should not be terribly difficult to figure out, but it might surprise some otherwise bright individuals nonetheless. Those feeling ignored and overlooked are not poor people with little money to spend but, according to data from iHeartMedia and Pushkin, these forsaken consumers are, in fact, white suburbanites making more than $100,000 a year. 

Advertisers overlook them for a number of reasons, apparently, some of which even they don’t seem to grasp. Marketers “tend to be youth obsessed,” appealing to an inordinate degree to “next gen customers,” an iHeartMedia spokesperson says. What so-called creatives in the marketing world don’t want to spend their workdays doing is catering to middle-class white people who live in the ‘burbs —what, not so long ago, were called “squares.”

To study this demographic, and people your ads with paunchy, balding dads who coach Little League and listen to Smashmouth in their Ford Broncos wouldn’t be much fun, unless, of course, they were made sport of. Who wants to find out what really excites an HR “rockstar” mom who, driving home in her Honda Pilot, drops by Whole Foods? No self-respecting advertising executive—especially when they drive a Ford Bronco and like Smashmouth—wants to make ads for them. 

The marketing professionals I know don’t want to do that. They like to think of themselves as trailblazers (“the herd of independent minds” was Peter Viereck’s coinage) and want more than anything to be “on trend.” This is the case even—especially—if they are themselves the white suburbanites pulling down more than $100,000 a year.

So they would much rather make ads that flatter their own sense of themselves as hip even if it means bypassing millions of consumers with gobs of disposable income. It’s much better, in the eyes of advertisers, to have ads starring fashion-forward young people, the more “diverse” the better. That, I’d submit, is why you see far more interracial couples in ads than in real life. There is also, increasingly, at least one ambiguously androgynous pairing just to keep the yokels guessing. 

People can feel resentful about all this if it makes them happy to do so, but the same research suggests that they should be grateful. Being considered unimportant by advertisers and therefore overlooked sounds like a pretty sweet deal. 

Marketers who are aware of this disconnect seem to believe that they can reach “ignored consumers” through “personalization,” by which I think they mean maddening text messages and other irksome interruptions to daily life. But I’m not certain of that. Surely, they are cooking up plenty of other annoyances that we’re not yet even aware of. 

Will they work? Nobody knows, but I hope not. And here too the same research might be evidence in support of my suspicion. Sixty-eight percent of consumers say they already “hate being trailed by targeted ads and are twice as likely to hate personalization via artificial intelligence,” as Marketingdive.com reports. “Despite such ambivalence, $9.5 billion is projected to be spent on personalization and hyper-targeting this year.”

Suit yourself. Just include me out.

The post The Blissful Neglect of Advertisers appeared first on The American Conservative.

The first major international challenge to Donald Trump’s deportation plans came on Sunday, when Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro refused to allow a military plane of manacled illegal intruders on American soil to land and disgorge its fettered cargo. Petro denounced the repatriation attempt and proclaimed that he would not see Colombian citizens “treated like criminals” for having violated American immigration law. 

In response, Donald Trump immediately announced on social media that the U.S. would be implementing an aggressive wave of retaliatory measures:

Petro’s denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:

-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.

-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.

-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.

-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.

-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed. 

These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!

The full suite of coercive tools Trump employed was breathtaking both in its scope and its immediacy. The United States is a major trade partner for Colombia, and the application of massive tariffs and sanctions would devastate the economy. Still, the economic threats are par for the course for Trump, who has long made a habit of using the power of the American economy as a tool for making political bargains. 

More interesting yet was the immediate suspension of Colombian visas, a direct strike against the Colombian political class. The United States is the playground for the wealthy and well-connected in the region—they vacation here, many have family and important business and political connections here, and most importantly, their children are educated here. Economic punishments, politicians can sell to the public as imperialist bullying by the United States—it might even play well to some sections of the populace. But the suspension of visas directly and immediately harms the most important and influential people in, around, and behind every Latin American government.

A glance at the headlines circulating among Colombia’s well-to-do confirms the facts. At time of writing, the top story of El Espectador consists of an article reassuring its audience that visa status is shortly to be normalized; the paper has run five additional stories on visas in the past two days, significantly more attention than was garnered by the potential tariffs threatened by the president. Much the same holds true for the other major paper of record in the country, El Tiempo: multiple major stories about visas, comparatively fewer about tariffs.

Petro responded on social media with a characteristic rambling, emotional response that accused Trump of wanting to kill him before defiantly asserting that “they inform me that you [President Trump] are placing a tariff of 50% on the fruit of our labor entering the U.S., and I will do the same.”

The threatened tariff war was not destined to take place. Faced with an internal crisis over the cancelled visas and looming economic threats, the Colombian government folded just one hour later and subsequently sent flights to pick up their erstwhile compatriots in return for avoiding sanctions and ending restrictions on visas and travel. Both sides ended by declaring a moral victory: Trump, that his administration had cowed the Colombian government into accepting repatriation flights, and Petro, that his government had picked up the Colombians in a manner that respected their dignity as Colombian citizens (though not before his social media assault unleashed a crisis in his government).

Trump has shown the world how serious he is about ensuring what he sees as American interests are respected, and that he’s willing to deploy what in previous administrations would have been considered overwhelming and disproportionate force to achieve it. Colombia provided a useful example, and despite Petro’s claims that he ultimately got what he wanted, other governments—in Latin America and elsewhere—will think twice about challenging the Trump administration on similar grounds.

After all, they want to be able to keep their kids at Harvard, too.

The post The Real Reason Colombia Folded appeared first on The American Conservative.

A reevaluation of foreign assistance programs and an America First policy directive to Secretary of State Marco Rubio were among the 46 executive orders President Trump put his Sharpie to on Inauguration Day.

Section 2 of the ”America First Policy Directive to Secretary Rubio” states,

As soon as practicable, the Secretary of State shall issue guidance bringing the Department of State’s policies, programs, personnel, and operations in line with an America First foreign policy, which puts America and its interests first.

Trump’s order on foreign assistance mandates a now widely reported on “90-day pause” on foreign development assistance, during which time  a determination will be made by the director of the Office of Management and Budget (which by that time will likely be the eminently sensible Russ Vought) together with the responsible department heads as to whether or not the administration will “continue, modify, or cease” these assistance programs. At a White House briefing on Tuesday, spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the pause is “about being good stewards of tax dollars.”

Perhaps so.

Yet chaos has reigned in the days since the orders were signed thanks to the intercession of a Biden-appointed judge in US District Court in Washington, DC who put a hold on the order until February 3. Following that, the White House has compounded the confusion by issuing and then rescinding a memo from OMB relating to the freeze. Leavitt, however, insists that the EOs on federal funding will “remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.” 

Got that?

Well, if the rollout has been less than stellar, the larger point the administration is making is unmistakable. These orders are also in line with a number of bills that have been introduced by congressional Republicans in recent years. This past October, Florida’s Republican Rep. Greg Steube introduced the Securing Taxpayer Assistance during Natural Disasters (STAND) Act, which would suspend US foreign assistance during the first 60 days of a Presidentially declared disaster. Prior to that, in August 2023, five congressmen associated with the House Freedom Caucus introduced H.R.5108 which sought to abolish the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The authors of the bill accused USAID of meddling in “local elections, promoting the interests of ‘women, youth, and other traditionally marginalized groups’ ahead of the interests of the other nations’ citizenry” and called for the agency’s abolition. 

Washington being what it is, the bill went nowhere.

So Trump’s recent EOs are a step in the right direction; they are certainly in keeping with the president’s campaign promise of crafting a more America-centric foreign policy. 

But for real change to happen, the Trump administration will have to also take on the nexus of federally funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have been weaponized to foment regime change around the globe. Such operations, funded at taxpayer expense, are often laundered through NGOs that claim to exist in order to promote democracy, free speech, and independent media outlets overseas.

The Trump administration should begin a series of audits on these programs with an eye toward dismantling for good the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department’s Center for Global Engagement. Federally funded and ostensibly “independent” NGOs, including the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, Freedom House and the Millennium Challenge Corporation should likewise be defunded.

For too long, NGOs have been tools of the national security bureaucracy, fronts by which we interfere with the political systems of other countries. Yet these projects have often backfired, leaving the U.S. open, quite understandably, to charges of hypocrisy and worse. 

Examples abound.

U.S. government–funded NGOs have been credibly linked to attempts at undermining and toppling regimes in Honduras (2009) Egypt (2011), Ukraine (2004, 2014), Georgia (2003, 2024) and many more besides.

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, a New York Times report titled “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings” noted,

A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6th Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the IRI, the NDI, and Freedom House.

In Armenia, the American-funded NGO Civitas, which publishes the online news outlet CivilNet, played a leading role in advocating for the overthrow of Armenian leader Serzh Sargsyan in 2018. Readers may also recall the embarrassment USAID cooked up in Cuba when, in 2010, it covertly launched what Foreign Policy magazine described as a “Twitter-like service” with the aim of setting off a “Cuban Spring” to “help bring about the collapse of the island’s Communist government.” But the project notoriously backfired when it was infiltrated by the Cuban government, which used the platform to gather intel on the 40,000 Cubans dissidents who subscribed to the service. Mission not accomplished.

Withal, a wholesale rethinking of the way America engages with the world is sorely needed. The Trump administration might go further when it comes to foreign assistance and tie it directly to the amount of aid the U.S. budgets to assist its own people; after all, USAID’s budget for foreign assistance FY2024 was $32 billion, while FEMA’s entire budget was $1.98 billion. 

If America First is to mean anything, discrepancies like these will have to be remedied.

The post End the Aid Charade appeared first on The American Conservative.

Former President Trump is pictured with North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum at a Nevada Republican caucus watch party in Las Vegas on February 8. (Ian Maule/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

While the media has been largely focused on the nominations of Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, and RFK Jr., other nominees such as Lee Zeldin for EPA and now Doug Burgum for Interior Secretary, have sailed through the confirmation process.

Burgum was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday with bipartisan support.

Like Lee Zeldin at EPA, Burgum’s confirmation is key to advancing Trump’s domestic energy policy. Burgum will be an important ally and advocate.

The Hill reports:

Senate confirms Burgum as Interior secretary

The Senate confirmed former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum as Interior secretary Thursday in a 79-18 vote, with the majority of Senate Democrats joining every Republican in the chamber.

Burgum, a one-time candidate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination-turned-visible Trump campaign surrogate, has been among the president’s least controversial nominees. He advanced out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last week in a nearly unanimous vote, with only Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) voting against the nomination.

Wyden, the mastermind of the renewable energy tax credits within the Inflation Reduction Act, cited President Trump’s opposition to the cuts in opposing both Burgum and Energy secretary nominee Chris Wright, who is also unlikely to face significant Senate opposition…

As Interior secretary, Burgum will oversee environmental policy and the nation’s public lands. Trump has vowed on the campaign trail and in his early actions as president to expand oil and gas development and roll back environmental protections enacted under the Biden administration.

Congratulations to Secretary Burgum.

pic.twitter.com/j4VLluRtdT

— Senate Republicans (@SenateGOP) January 31, 2025

BREAKING: Doug Burgum has been confirmed as the Secretary of Interior pic.twitter.com/4vLD2xNqLG

— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) January 30, 2025

CONFIRMED: Doug Burgum as the 55th Secretary of the Interior pic.twitter.com/2O4XksFKD6

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) January 30, 2025

The Trump team is coming together. Doug Burgum will do a great job in this role.

The post CONFIRMED: Former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum is Now Trump’s Interior Secretary appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Photo credit: Vittorio, a Catholic Karenni Ranger, was killed while serving the civilian population in the struggle for a federal democracy. Photo courtesy of Free Burma Rangers (FBR).

Over the past 75 years, millions of lives have been destroyed, derailed, or otherwise shattered by the war in Burma, as the country’s diverse ethnic and religious groups continue their fight against successive military juntas.

While the junta enjoys military and financial support from Russia and China, the pro-democracy forces receive little more than statements of condemnation from the UN and the international community—without any material aid, political backing, or military intervention.

Vittorio, a Catholic Karenni Free Burma Ranger (FBR) and a member of the pro-democracy resistance, was killed in action while defending his ethnic and religious community from the military junta’s forces. Looking at his photos, it’s hard to believe he’s gone. He doesn’t look like someone who should be dead—he should have had his whole life ahead of him. If he had been born in America, he would have been preparing for prom, learning to drive, working a part-time job—enjoying one last summer with his friends before college. Instead, he was born into a war—the same war his parents, and possibly even his grandparents, were born into. Burma’s war is the longest-running conflict in the world, and Vittorio never knew anything else. He grew up in hardship and died serving others.

As I get older, the ethnic resistance fighters seem younger and younger. Recently, a 16-year-old soldier stepped on a landmine while the Rangers were inspecting a church that had been bombed by the junta. He survived, but he lost his foot. If he lives to 35, he will have spent more years without his foot than with it—a stark reminder of how war steals not just lives, but entire futures.

In Chiangmai, Thailand, I met a 19-year-old Catholic Karenni ex-soldier who is now trying to earn an American GED and get an education, but the odds are stacked against him. He grew up in the countryside with a poor education to begin with, then came COVID lockdowns, school closures, and finally the coup. He was barely 14 when he last sat in a classroom, and the years since have been filled with war. When he arrived in Chiang Mai, he had no formal schooling for half a decade.

Even if he manages to pass his GED, his future remains uncertain. His family is displaced, struggling daily just to find food. There is no one to pay for his college tuition. At best, he will become an undocumented laborer in Thailand. At worst, he will be deported back into a warzone.

This is the grim reality of Burma’s war—a war that has raged since 1948, robbing entire generations of their future. It’s not just the dead who are casualties; the living have also lost everything—their education, their careers, their chance to travel, to raise families, to build lives that the rest of the world takes for granted.

Across the country, 3.5 million people are internally displaced, while another 3 to 4 million are hiding in Thailand. Add to that a million in Bangladesh, thousands more in India, and those resettled in third countries, and you realize that nearly 18% of Burma’s population no longer lives where they are supposed to. They are no longer in their homes, surrounded by their families, their farms, their language, their culture.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Karenni State, Burma’s only Catholic-majority region, where 80% of the population has been displaced. Nearly everyone has witnessed their homes and villages being destroyed. Airstrikes are a daily reality. Most have seen people killed firsthand. Even young children tell stories of watching their neighbors blown apart.

Yesterday, a Catholic nun wept as she told me about a boy who had been mangled by a bomb dropped from a Chinese aircraft.

In violation of international sanctions, Russia and China continue to supply the junta with weapons and fuel, enabling its brutal campaign against the people of Burma. Despite this, resistance forces have captured roughly 80% of the country’s territory. However, without international support, they have no way of seizing the remaining government strongholds, which are fortified with landmines, drones, and total air superiority.

Meanwhile, the junta regularly launches airstrikes on civilian villages, churches, temples, IDP camps, hospitals, and schools, killing indiscriminately. The mass killing of civilians will only end when the junta has been defanged and its support from Russia and China is halted. And until the junta falls, the civilian government cannot begin rebuilding—roads will remain impassable, schools will remain closed, and an entire generation will continue to grow up in war instead of peace.

In January 2025, David Eubank, head of Free Burma Rangers (FBR), and Burma expert Ashley South issued an open letter calling for international intervention. They wrote:

“The United States should support freedom and democracy in Burma—because this is the right thing to do for the people of Burma, the region, and the world. Supporting democracy in Burma can also help counter Chinese state authoritarian influence and oppression.”

The post Wasted Generations in the Endless Burma (Myanmar) War appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, the parents of now imprisoned crypto-scammer Sam Bankman-Fried, are reportedly trying to appeal to President Trump for a pardon for their son.

This is incredibly ironic, when you consider the fact that Bankman-Fried was accused of using his scam to help Democrats and keep Republicans like Donald Trump from holding office.

As the Gateway Pundit reported in March of 2024, Bankman-Fried was the second biggest Democrat donor after only left-wing billionaire George Soros.

His parents have a lot of nerve seeking a pardon from Trump.

Breitbart News reports:

Sam Bankman-Fried’s Parents Scheming to Get Son Pardoned by Trump

The parents of disgraced former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried are reportedly scheming to get Sam pardoned by President Donald Trump.

Stanford Law School Professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried reportedly had meetings recently with lawyers and others in Trump’s orbit to have Sam Bankman-Fried receive clemency.

Bankman-Fried was sentenced last March to 25 years after being convicted of five counts of conspiracy and two counts of wire fraud.

The former CEO of the digital currency exchange FTX has made the case that his sentence was “draconian” as FTX customers have largely recovered most of the money they had lost.

Ryan Salame, a former FTX executive who was sentenced to more than seven years in prison, also seeks a pardon.

It’s difficult to imagine Trump going along with this.

Bankman-Fried was one of the biggest donors to all of Trump’s worst political enemies, the same people who tried to put Trump in prison.

Trump giving him a pardon would be the worst unforced error of his political career. https://t.co/HR2Vwcp3SW

— ☈ (@revenant_MMXX) January 31, 2025

Apparently Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents are trying to get a presidential pardon from Trump. These are the same two who donated millions upon millions to Biden and the DNC. pic.twitter.com/D01FCVlGqg

— DΛVID (@DavidShares) January 30, 2025

Under no circumstances should President Trump pardon this guy.

Sam Bankman-Fried must spend many more decades in prison. pic.twitter.com/1HZtx7txj9

— George (@BehizyTweets) January 30, 2025

Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried were probably hoping that Kamala Harris would win the election and pardon their son. American voters had other plans.

The post REPORT: Parents of Sam Bankman-Fried Are Trying to Get Trump to Pardon Their Son appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.