New Delhi, June 9 -- a request to President Donald Trump for a pardon.

The application specifies a "pardon after completion of sentence," the narrower of the two main clemency categories, which stops short of asking for immediate release. What it does ask for, if granted, is the removal of the federal conviction itself. Bankman-Fried is serving a 25-year term at a low-security federal correctional facility in Santa Barbara, California, where he is not scheduled for release until October 2044.

The formal filing does not shift the political calculus. Trump told The New York Times in January 2026 that Bankman-Fried should not count on clemency, grouping him alongside former Senator Robert Menendez and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as...