Welcome back everyone. I am Cass P Antsy.
I'm joined as usual by my partner in crime, Mr. Bennett
Tomlin. Both good today.
We have already recorded an episode, so we're dumping in,
Dumping in. It's probably the wrong way to
put it. Can't even stop at the episodes.
We're flying through one of our mouths.
We're vomiting and spewing all over you.
Hey, roll in. Not the way I wanted to start
this episode, but there you go. Welcome back everyone.
We're going to be talking about a subject that I wrote in op-ed
about and Bennett wrote a piece about as well in the newsletter
for Protos, something we both seem to care about that the
reaction to was pretty mixed, which is I expected.
Honestly, I expected more vitriol from my for my
statement, but yeah, it was pretty mixed and some people
liked it, some people hated it. We're both making the argument
that while it is pretty funny in a sense to see SBF struggling
and in pain, I think everybody gets some real value out of that
in terms of their like, yes guy who's hurt so many people.
This is and legitimately right. Like this guy has damaged
thousands of people, probably ruined dozens if not hundreds of
people's lives for a significant if not forever amount of time.
So seeing him in pain, people are enjoying a lot.
But I think that it's a more important point that's being
stated by him. And basically he went to court
and said that he's not getting his medications on time.
He's on as far as we know. I don't know how many
medications he on he's on, but we know for sure that he's on N
Sam and he's on Adderall. Now Adderall I'm sure most
people are familiar with is for treatment of ADHD and some other
mental disorders. N Sam is a pretty serious drug
as far as I can tell, in terms of, like, its effects on you.
And it seems like he's taking a lot of it for both of them, for
both the. I guess.
I don't know. I don't know.
I'm not a doctor. I don't know what a lot is.
Basically, he's not getting his drugs and he's not getting the
vegan meals he wants. He wants vegan meals and he's
not getting those vegan meals because I guess the prison
system is basically like, why should he?
He's not special. But there therein lies the
problem, which is, don't you think prisoners should be
getting the medical treatment they need?
And don't you think they should be getting basic food given to
them, even if it's something demanded like vegan food or
vegetarian food? Yeah, why don't you get us
started off on? That I think this issue is kind
of multifactorial and multifaceted, and I understand
why a lot of people are having the feelings they're have
having. It's like, first I want to
acknowledge that, like Sam Bankman, Freed's experience with
the justice system has been one very much shaped by his
privilege. Right.
Like he was able to find the people to put up his massive
bond. And even after, like, repeated
bail violations, connecting to the VPN, doing all these other
things, he remained free until he started doing what?
I'm not going to say he's legally witness tampering
because I'm not a prosecutor. But that feels a lot like
witness intimidation. Soon as he started doing that,
now he has to go back to prison. And so, yeah, Sam, in case
anyone is unfamiliar, let's let me stop you right there.
In case anyone's unfamiliar, just just so you're you're you
understand, Sam Bang and Freed released Caroline Ellison's
personal Diaries. Now, Caroline Ellison was the
head of trading over at Alameter Research at the time of the
collapse, and he released these very personal, kind of
sensational Diaries to the New York Times, which is just wild,
as you said. Like you, he had been
reprimanded before for his bail violations and kind of pulled to
He was skating on thin ice already.
And I do get why people are like, well, if you didn't want
to go back to jail and get treated like crap, maybe you
should have thought about that. Understood.
But anyway, sorry, I just wanted to give.
Like, that's absolutely true. Sam Bankman freed, was lucky to
get the bail conditions he did and should not have been
violating them, and repeated violation of bail means he
should be in pretrial detention. And like one of the other things
that's come up is Lauren's tribe.
A constitutional lawyer wrote a motion, wrote a letter to the
court describing Sam Bankman Freed's treatment and like
insisted that if. Sam Bankman Freed were to be
detained where he was time out. Being detained, not having
access to computer would make Prep preparing his defense much
more difficult. And that represented like a
potential constitutional issue, and I think there's a bit of
merit there, but and this gets into like the bigger problem
here, that these problems are so much bigger than Sam Bankman
freed. Right, like not just Sam
Bankman. Freed should be able to get
their medications and, like a diet in accordance with their
moral wishes. Everyone being held in pretrial
detention is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
These are people who deserve to be like to have reasonable
standards while they're being detained, should have access to
things that help them prepare their defenses, should be able
to receive medications they need.
And the United States justice system fails to provide that for
such a vast number of inmates including because he is there
right now. Sam Bankman Freed Yeah.
I mean, I think actually part of this for me calls into attention
how serious the issues are in the Estes and penal systems of
the United States of America, right?
Because here we have possibly one of the most famous white
collar criminals of all time, not just of the past year or two
of all time. He's up there with Elizabeth
Holmes and Bernie Madoff. Like this guy is going to go
down in history as one of the biggest financial scammers and
possibly allegedly maybe he'll get off and no crimes were
committed in fucking La La land. But anyway, my point here being
that this guy is as big as it gets and the fact he's still
being mistreated in prison or in, sorry, excuse me, in
pretrial detention, in jail, speaks to how broken the system.
Because imagine how the people with no voice are are doing
right now. Imagine how the people who don't
have money to pay for bail Even so end up in prison for or in
jail for, in jail for weeks if not months before they go to
trial. Like these are real issues that
are happening every day to millions of people, not not just
SBF. And that's the important part of
this. That's why I'm glad it's being
it's being, there's some attention being brought to it.
Whether or not people agree with whether SBF should be given
these basic human rights, I think he should.
Whether other people think so, I guess, is just how angry they
are with him. Yeah.
I especially understand why, like other people who have had
experiences with the criminal justice system might end up
feeling particularly frustrated themselves.
Because they'll be. They may see it as I had it even
worse than that, and I didn't even steal $9 billion from my
customers, you know? And so I'd certainly understand
there's lots of reasons for lots of people to be lashing out.
But like you said, fundamentally The thing is people deserve
rights. They deserve to have access to
these things that help them form their defenses, and they deserve
a strenuous defense on their behalf in the justice system.
And those things are important. Those things we should strive to
provide those to everyone and a lot of.
Everyone happens to include him, yes.
And a lot of these, a lot of these issues are totally fixable
as far as I'm concerned, like vegan meals.
There's a lot of people pushing back on my statements about
that. I was like, oh, he'd give him
his vegan meals, just give it to him.
Everyone's like, well, he doesn't necessarily deserve to
have. It's not like it's covered by
the Constitution And IE, there are prisoners who are Jewish or
Muslim in prison who are given kosher meals and halal meals
right to meet to meet their religious needs.
The the pushback for the veganism that I heard was, well,
this isn't a religious thing. I want to push back on that and
just say one. Vegan meals are incredibly easy
to cook. We're talking about rice, bread
and vegetables. Like, if you're not already, if
you don't already have those things available for prisoners,
there's a problem. Those all of those ingredients
should be actively there for you to be able to make this thing.
I know that they make vegetarian meals for vegetarian because
probably because there's Hindu prisoners and they need to, some
of them need to follow strict vegetarian meals and guidelines,
right? But we are equipped to handle
this. We have the money, we have the
the rules and regulations in place that this should not be an
issue. It's crazy to me to push back on
the idea that like, well, and this guy can eat vegan food in
prison. The thing I want to highlight
there is there often are legal protections for people with
sincerely held religious beliefs to get access to certain things.
Like you're talking about kosher halal and things like that.
And often our prison system fails to do what it's legally
supposed to in many of those cases as well.
And like, again, this is just an example of the pattern in
history of human rights abuses across the US penal system.
Like, there's a reason international human rights
organizations regularly raise alarms about the US prison
system. And it's because there are
regular and massive human rights abuses in our prison system.
Yep. And there's.
And that's also. That brings up another point
that I brought up which is you know, people I think like to
assume like, Oh well, this guy's a big fucking scammer.
He deserves to rot in jail and get Shiv and get treated like
shit. I hope, I hope that's what
happens and and I go, OK, just to for some perspective here, 5%
of the entire US population is going to spend some time behind
bars. So you're going to, if you're
not the one who ends up behind you in jail at some point, or in
prison at some point, someone you know absolutely will. 100%
sure, 100% sure, right? If you go outside and meet
people, someone you know will go to jail or prison, do you want
them to be treated respectfully and with dignity, or do you not
give a shit? Do you really think, like anyone
who's in jail, anyone who's in prison deserves the worst kind
of treatment? It's time to reflect on these
things. You know, we live in a society.
I it's it. It's true, though.
Like we shouldn't be the the fact these are it's such
punitive measures, right? Instead of worrying about
recidivism, instead of worrying about rehabilitation, instead of
worrying about making sure that these people don't repeat their
fucking problems when they go back into society, We're focused
on hurting people as much as possible.
And the reality is, if Sam Bankman Freed gets 15 years in
prison or something 10/15/20 and is treated like horseshit the
entire time, like no human rights, do you think he's going
to come out a like capable and reasonable human being?
At least if you try to rehabilitate him, he's not
necessarily going to be as bad. At least you can say you tried
like just damaging someone repeatedly.
We know what that does to people, so I just don't
understand this at all. And I think people need to
reevaluate their It's like vengeance is just so easy and I
think people really need to reevaluate where their morals
and ethics lie. When it comes to this, I get it.
It's easy to hate SVF. He is a total scammer.
He lies constantly. The dude cannot open his mouth
and speak any honest truth for years on end.
He's like the his behavior is disgusting.
He's as despicable as it gets without getting into like,
murder and other horrifying crimes.
Right. He's disgusting.
Fine. He's also a human being.
Like, I don't know, man. It just the the reaction was
just so it was kind of like, man, I I don't understand how so
many people think this is acceptable, you know?
Yeah, and like, that's what you're up.
What Ed was about. And there was definitely a lot
of people who agree that human beings deserve treatment as
human beings, which is good. The other thing I want to talk
about besides this, which is also something we talked about a
little bit in our Reggie Fowler episode of People Want to go
back and Listen to that. There's been still conspiracy
theory theories about Sam Bankman freed and his ongoing
criminal prosecution. Including the fact that as part
of our extradition treaty with the Bahamas, we have certain
responsibilities about when charges are introduced and when
people are extradited, and those were not necessarily followed
with Sam Bankman Freed, which has since required certain
charges to be removed from like the current trial date.
And the allegations either incorporated in to other
existing charges or other charges are pending reintroduce,
reintroduction for month. Trial date, yes.
And so those charges are not really going away.
And as we've talked about before in the case of Sam Bankman
Freed, if prosecutors really wanted, they could go through
and add one wire fraud charge for like every single person who
sent money to Alameda Research under like the false pretenses
that it was going to FTX or something, right.
And so prosecutors. Can and potentially will still
scale up his prosecution in the future if that's what they think
is justified inappropriate. So I've just been a little bit
frustrated with some of the conspiracy theories around those
dropping of charges. And like the other thing I'm
going to emphasize, just to kind of make sure people understand
this just because Sam Bankman Freed, is pleading not guilty.
Right now does not mean he will continue to plead not guilty.
Often you are required to plead not guilty initially, even if
you think you are guilty, just because, like, the system's not
ready for you to plead guilty yet and like, that's an actual
thing that exists. And, and I want to be clear here
too, if you have a capable legal team behind you, which as far as
I know he does, you're generally not going to plead guilty right
away. Why?
Well, you're not going to get anything in return, right?
If they don't offer you anything and you go, I plead guilty,
well, they're going to accept your guilty plea and they are
going to hang you from the gallows.
You've got to get something in return and to get something in
return, you're going to play a little bit of a game.
And that unfortunately, whether we like it or not, is a part of
the legal system, right? So you have to have something
for them for you to plead guilty, give them something and
them to be like, OK, well then we'll cut you a deal.
And that's what SPF is hoping will happen.
That doesn't mean that's what happens.
That doesn't mean he gets only five years or only 10 years or
who knows. But that's what SPF wants to
happen, and we don't know if it will.
Yeah, Sam Bankman. Freed's goal, as far as I can
tell right now, is basically to muddy the waters, cast doubt on
key witnesses and the evidence they're introducing.
Try to place the blame like his Mens Rea, his head state for
many of these decisions. Say that that state was.
Induced by legal counsel and other things to make it so that
prosecutors don't want to add more charges that will be hard
to prove. So that like you're saying he
can eventually come up with some deal where he shares whatever
information he does have? In exchange for a reduced
sentence, yada yada yada. That's the met up, probably, of
what his team is planning to do. The other thing I want to
emphasize to people is from where I'm sitting, and again,
we're not lawyers, we're definitely not prosecutors, not
experts. But it seems quite likely to me
that Sam Bankman Freed is going to prison for much longer than
Sam Bankman Freed would want to go to prison.
Anytime is more than he wants for.
Sure, yeah. But there are already guilty
pleas from almost all the rest alike the top executives at.
FTX, they have full cooperation access to all the
communications, like all the text messages, all the records,
all the logs. They have such an over what, 4
million pages or something was the initial like discovery
they're sending over to him. There are massive.
Quantities of evidence? Math.
Powerful, cooperating witnesses. Like, he's in a really bad place
and that's just for evidence. I want, I want people to
understand that this is just, this is we're just saying like,
oh shit, there's a lot of evidence against this guy.
So he's in trouble on that front.
But I want to point people to a recent guilty white collar
criminal, Elizabeth Holmes, OK? She is going to be doing nine
years in a federal prison, OK? She just had her second baby.
She was pregnant during the trial.
If that isn't going to win you some, you know, benefit of the
doubt and some Oh my gosh, well, at least you know, she's a she's
a mother now. We got to we got to make sure
that she's able to spend time with her kids and they don't
grow up without a mom and blah, blah, blah.
She's doing 9 years behind bars for her crimes.
She didn't hurt nearly as many people as Sam Bankman freed.
She only hurt mostly just very wealthy people.
So, like, in terms of that, just reflect on that, right?
That's nine years for someone who did essentially a smaller
fraud that hurt less people and is a more sympathetic character.
You think SPF is going to get off?
Fucking wake up, dude. There's not a chance in the
world. I'll bet anyone.
If you think he's not going to, if you think he's genuinely
going to do no time, I'll bet anybody.
I'll bet anyone. Yes, he donated to President
Biden, right? And was part of some conspiracy
involving Szalinski and he met. Ups but I know he was involved
right? Whatever.
I just don't it's so it's so I'm so past it and then and for me
the one thing I also want to emphasize here is how obviously
failed the Cash Cash bail bond mechanism is in general right.
And I think proof of this is SBF.
SBF gets $250 million bail bond. Obviously the the way it works
in case anyone's unfamiliar as you pay it roughly 10% of that
and you can get out if you don't have the money to pay for it
yourself or the collateral to pay for itself for yourself.
You can usually get a bail bondsman to take on that that
collateral obligation for you partially and then you have to
pay back a loan on that obligation.
What did this accomplish right. We have to reflect on this.
What did it accomplished? He put up 200.
They put up $250 million to get Sandbank and Freed out of
detention. Then he goes out, He starts
spreading rumors, getting in touch with journalists.
He's not supposed to breaking all the rules of the bail that
he was given with this money and this collateral.
And now he's back in detention again.
So it accomplished nothing. It allowed him to break some
rules and as you said, muddy the waters and make things more
complex and weird. Another individual who just got
a big gigantic, I think the largest in history in terms of
actually being paid for, Joe Lewis, who is the owner of
Tottenham Hotspur and the Albany, which is where SBF was
living when he got in trouble. This guy just got in trouble
too, for insider trading and fraud, and he put up a $300
million bail with his yacht and private jet.
So what do we think of this is going to do?
I mean, this guy's A billionaire.
He can buy a new jet tomorrow, he can buy a new yacht tomorrow.
It doesn't matter. He can go run away if he needs
to. Nothing is going to stop him
from doing that, right unless you put an ankle monitor around
him. You ensure that you're tracking
him with GPS and satellite tracking, that you ensure that
he isn't leaving the country. You take his passport, you there
are protocols to ensure it, and none of it has to do with money.
We need to get rid of this cash bail bond system like
immediately. It doesn't make any sense at
all. I strongly agree.
I think the cash bail bond system is like one of the.
Clearest examples in our criminal justice system of how
we have codified a certain privilege for the most privilege
right that once you have money, you can avoid these things that
others can't. And as you're saying, the only
real differentiator between these cases is whether or not
you have money when you're accused of a crime.
That shouldn't be the goal of our system.
The Platonic ideal of our legal system is one that treats like
the most downtrodden and the most like wealthy and powerful.
As equal as you possibly can. And like there's limits within
reason of how far you can take that perhaps.
But like that's the ideal. And cash bail bond is just one
example of where we don't even try to do that.
Yeah, that's right. It's just an obvious advantage
for rich people and really no advantage for for anyone who
doesn't have the income to to deal with this kind of thing.
Yeah, it's just a very gross, gross, broken, broken system
that needs fixing. Well, and if you listen to like,
testimony of certain convicts and stuff, like when you are
destitute, prosecutors and Da's have been accused of using that
as leverage, basically because they know you're going back into
whatever horrible detention facility you're in.
They know you're more desperate to strike a deal or to say
whatever, to do whatever, because you don't want to go
back. Right.
And to be clear, like it's one of the founding principles of
our country is kind of this innocent until proven guilty,
right? That you aren't going to be
treated like you are guilty even if everyone, like watched you do
the crime. Like, until we prove it in a
court of law, you are innocent. And so at like, reasonable bail
without having to pay an arm and a leg, just seems like the right
thing to do here as a country to follow our guiding principles.
I like maybe I'm shouting into the void here.
But like this, it's just, it's just something I think is
necessary for us to talk about and something I really do think
can be fixed within our lifetime.
Like, I don't expect the entire penal system to get overturned.
I hate the idea that private prisons do what they do in our
country. I think that, yeah, that they
exist like that. They aren't more heavily
regulated. Like that's why there's so many
people in prison in our country. I have no doubt about that.
But, like, if we're not going to change that anytime soon, and
we're not, then the least we can do is ensure that Bail bond is
working properly, that prisoners are getting their medicine, that
prisoners are getting the food that they need.
Like obviously within reason, right?
If somebody says I'm on an only wog you steak diet or something,
I understand being like, go fuck yourself.
Who's going? To be the first indicted
bitcoiner to argue that they have a moral conviction that
requires them to have only red meat, I would think they would
already be in there, right? There's got to be a few dudes
who were already in prison trying to argue that already
that I don't fucking buy. There's a limit limit to how
even how far I will go in terms of my sympathy.
But yes, I do think we need to reform this stuff.
SPF is a good jumping off point for that.
So we thought it was worth talking about, understand some
people are just going to be like, why does SPF?
Like SPF isn't going to change this.
And it's like, but we can make this a point of of retention of
this information for everyone in crypto to be like, we need to
change this. A lot of people do focus on this
stuff and they understand the corruptness of it in
cryptocurrency and that's good. But a lot of people also don't
care about criminal reform and just in the justice system, and
I think it's probably time to think about it because some of
you are definitely going to go to prison.