Bankman-Fried is also drawing attention from the amount of money he donated to Democratic Party causes and politicians. He was Joe Biden’s second largest donor in 2020 and came in right behind George Soros in 2022, having donated roughly $39 million to Democratic candidates and platforms. And SBF bankrolled several corporate media outlets through grant foundations. He started the Building a Stronger Future Foundation, which was created to support journalism and investigative research under the guise of pandemic preparedness and climate.

The media outlets he buoyed with FTX investor money include a list of popular titles that lean to the left when it comes to covering issues like those Bankman-Fried is passionate about: Vox, the Intercept, ProPublica, the Law and Justice Journalism Project and the recently launched Semafor, a much-hyped news outlet cofounded by former BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith. Smith has brought several known names from the world of Beltway media onboard, including Politico’s Max Tani and the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel, the latter of whom it’s fair to assume was looking for an exit after being suspended for retweeting a joke earlier this year. Semafor and Vox have disclosed Bankman-Fried as a financial backer in their recent reporting on the FTX collapse, but that’s about it.

Yet since the scandal broke, Bankman-Fried has been treated to two relative puff pieces on his philanthropic efforts in the Washington Post and the New York Times. Both drew severe backlash on social media for seeming to handle him with kid gloves.