Ryan Salame, the former FTX executive serving a 90-month prison sentence, has publicly accused the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) of political persecution and coercing his guilty plea by threatening his pregnant fiancée. In a detailed account published on X, Salame alleges the prosecution "picked people, not crimes," targeting him for his Republican campaign donations while giving a "free pass" to FTX associates involved in Democratic fundraising.
Salame, 32, is currently incarcerated at FCI Cumberland in Maryland. He claims prosecutors, led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, ignored exculpatory evidence and silenced favorable witnesses. "Biden’s DOJ went to extreme lengths to bury and ignore exculpatory evidence and silence witnesses. You don’t do that if you have a strong case. You don’t threaten people’s loved ones to force guilty pleas," he wrote.
The central allegation involves plea negotiations. Salame states that when he intended to go to trial, Sassoon returned with an offer: plead guilty and prosecutors would drop an investigation into his pregnant fiancée, Michelle Bond. "They held a gun on my wife while she was pregnant – both literally and figuratively," Salame claimed. Despite his cooperation, Bond was later indicted in August 2024 for campaign finance violations related to her 2022 congressional run, allegedly involving a $400,000 payment from FTX arranged by Salame.
Salame's 90-month sentence, imposed by Judge Lewis Kaplan, exceeded the five-to-seven-year term prosecutors had recommended. He argues his prosecution was politically motivated, pointing to his $23 million in donations to mostly Republican candidates during the midterm elections—a contrast to the Democratic-leaning inner circle of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
In his defense, Salame presented loan documents from Alameda Research, legal opinions, and tax advice he says validated the transactions in question. He also questioned the logic of targeting him as a "straw donor" given his personal wealth, which he claims was in the "hundreds of millions of dollars."
Bond has pleaded not guilty, with her legal team arguing the government used "stealth and deception" to secure Salame's plea and then reneged on its assurances. At a November 2025 hearing, Sassoon denied making any promises of immunity for Bond, testifying she is not in the business of "gotcha" and believed Salame's lawyers used the suggestion of a deal as a "negotiating tactic."
Salame praised the current Trump administration's DOJ for issuing a policy statement aimed at preventing such "lawfare," while lamenting that many remain imprisoned under the previous system. The DOJ has not yet publicly commented on Salame's allegations.
