Former FTX executive Ryan Salame’s domestic partner Michelle Bond was hit with campaign finance charges Thursday in New York.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams alleges that Bond illegally funded her campaign for a House seat in New York’s 1st congressional district with a “sham” $400,000 payment and a $100,000 annual payment, both from now-defunct FTX.
She also illegally funded her campaign with hundreds of thousands of dollars wired to her personal account from Salame, identified in court documents as co-conspirator 1, according to Williams; and then “attempted to conceal her and CC-1 's conduct by … making false statements to a congressional committee and the Federal Election Commission.”
Bond has been charged with four counts: conspiracy to cause unlawful political contributions, causing and accepting excessive campaign contributions, causing and receiving an unlawful corporate contribution, and causing and receiving a conduit contribution.
Salame pleaded guilty last September to one charge each of violating campaign finance laws and operating an illegal money-transmitting business; and he’s set to begin a 7½-year prison term in October.
Now, he’s asked Judge Lewis Kaplan to void his guilty plea, claiming the feds went back on a verbal agreement that they’d drop their probe into Bond if he pleaded guilty.
“In an effort to induce Salame’s plea, Government lawyers conveyed that they would discontinue investigating Bond if Salame pleaded guilty. Considering Salame’s manifest desire to protect Bond, Salame responded by agreeing to enter into a plea agreement,” Salame’s attorney, H. Christopher Bartolomucci, wrote in court documents Wednesday. “Yet the Government failed to abide by its word, recently resuming its investigation into Bond and pursuing an indictment against her.”
In a letter to Kaplan on Wednesday, Williams called Salame’s attempt to renege his guilty plea “shameless and self-serving,” and said his claims that a verbal agreement that made Bond off-limits to prosecutors existed was “demonstrably false.”
Williams wrote in the letter that the government had made it clear in conversations preceding Salame’s guilty plea that prosecutors “view discussions of Michelle [Bond]/Ryan [Salame] as separate, a Ryan disposition will not resolve investigation of Michelle’s conduct.”
In response to Williams’ letter and assertion that Salame’s submission was self-serving, Salame tweeted, “Literally the opposite, lock me up just abide by the promise you know you made if I agreed.”
Kaplan will hear arguments from both sides Sept. 12 and decide whether or not to void Salame’s guilty plea.
