There's maybe one President that didn't get elected because of his use of the pardon. But then, Ford wasn't elected President or Vice President before he pardoned Nixon either.
Otherwise, I'm not aware of a pardon so controversial that it became a major campaign issue. And for a second term President, there's not really any downside.
Because the pattern they usually follow is to pardon the questionable cases (personal friends, people with financial ties to the President, etc.) just before they go out of office.
If America mistrusts government so much that it wants the President to be a de facto monarch, it should just drop the pretense at being a republic and have a monarchy already. Or make the oligarchy official and elect a CEO in chief. At least then there's only one head for the CIA to put a bullet into.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/02/sam-bankman-fried-bi...
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/20/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-allies...
> Ryan Salame, who was the CEO of FTX’s digital markets division, donated millions of dollars to Republican political action committees and affiliated “dark money” groups with funds from FTX’s affiliated hedge fund, Alameda Research, according to the documents. Salame pleaded guilty last month to federal campaign finance and money-transmitting crimes. Caroline Ellison, who ran Alameda and once dated Bankman-Fried, also gave millions to right-leaning nonprofit groups, the documents say.
> Bankman-Fried donated $10 million to a [Mitch] McConnell-linked group named One Nation in August 2022, according to the evidence filed by prosecutors. The money came directly from an Alameda Research account, prosecutors said.
There's little reason to believe any of that influence remains now that he's broke.
> The purpose of those donations, he said, was to fund political initiatives supported by Bankman-Fried. In a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday, prosecutors said they had obtained private messages in which Salame wrote that Bankman-Fried wanted to support politicians in both parties who were “pro crypto,” while working to get “anti crypto” lawmakers out of office.
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/09/07/ex-ftx-executive-...
> Salame doled out more than $24 million to Republican political candidates during his time at FTX, and he was the 11th largest individual U.S. political donor in 2022 according to OpenSecrets.org. In a court filing last month, prosecutors shared “private messages” from Salame that purport to show him explaining how he was used as a straw donor to secretly funnel money from FTX and Bankman-Fried.
https://qz.com/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-republicans-democrats-m...
> In one interview last November, Bankman-Fried admitted to donating roughly equal amounts to Democrats and Republicans but made sure that “all my Republican donations were dark.” He said he did this because he felt the press had a tendency to “freak” when donations were made to the Grand Old Party (GOP). At the 2022 midterm campaign funding cycle, he said he may have been the “second or third biggest” GOP donor.
Nobody on the left wants to see him walk free, either. His remaining political capital is nill. Politicians only care about rich donors if they remain rich donors.
Salame has pled guilty to this, and his tens of millions in donations are entirely in the public record. https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?name=Ryan+S...
No shit. If you scroll up, I assert "FTX was attempting to buy influence on both sides of the aisle" and mention Salame numerous times. Please don't blame me for a lack of reading comprehension on your part.
SBF's texts to Salame about all this were obtained by prosecutors, garnering a guilty plea. I've presented a number of links to reputable sources, to which your replies amount to "nuh uh", so I think I'm out.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/sam-bankma...
"He was lauded for his major donations to Democrats, but now he says he was secretly giving to Republicans in roughly equal measure."
It's not like SBF is going to be making any big future donations.
Donors hoping for favours know donations only buy so much; the politician takes the money in order to improve their chances of getting elected. If you want a favour which noticeably reduces their chance of getting re-elected - you won't get it.
He'll probably need to wait about 2-4 terms, but eventually the bribery ... uh ... mercy will go through.