Some members of the liberal media are already trying to rehab disgraced "crypto king" Sam Bankman-Fried's image, and some critics suggest he believes he will never be held accountable for his alleged crimes.
On "The Five" Wednesday, Rachel Campos-Duffy pointed to what she called a New York Times "puff piece" bemoaning that Bankman-Fried's indictment and extradition may hurt the Bahamas, where he was apparently living and working, as the nation just off Florida's coast relies heavily on tourism and investment monies.
"If you steal billions of dollars from average Americans, you are not a celebrity. You are a criminal. And yet this guy is being treated like a celebrity. And I believe something is going on here," she said.
Campos-Duffy added that Bankman-Fried is acting as if he knows he is not really in trouble. Instead, he appears to feel he is being protected by powerful interests and individuals, she surmised.
BENEFICIARIES OF BANKMAN-FRIED'S ‘DIRTY MONEY’ SHOULD PAY IT BACK: PIRRO
"It could be that this guy is meant to create so much doubt in [unregulated] crypto, right -- that it would make it easier for our government to usher in the digital dollar, which, as you know, is a powerful tool to control people," Campos-Duffy added.
Digitizing U.S. legal tender from its physical bill and coin form allows the federal government to be one step closer to ushering in a Chinese Communist Party-style "social credit-score" system, she argued.
"I believe we've already seen elements of that before."
"Five" co-host Richard Fowler later agreed Bankman-Fried should be behind bars and not under house arrest at his parents' estate, and that the government may have failed in its role of oversight and consumer protection.
"If you read this piece by The New York Times, what they talk about regarding the Bahamas specifically, it's important to give that some perspective," he said. "The Bahamas is a country that benefits off of tourism. So the idea that Sam Bankman-Fried was bringing in these folks that were spending millions of dollars in that country is the reason why [they] liked him."
Fowler further claimed the Bahamian government, unlike the U.S., heavily regulates cryptocurrency investing.
"So maybe we should copy and paste their crypto policy here and maybe Sam Bankman-Fried would not have been able to take it," he said.
