JANE ROSENBERG
- Caroline Ellison said Sam Bankman-Fried had ambitions to become US president
- She said Bankman-Fried told her there was a 5% chance it'll happen "some day," she said.
- Bankman-Fried is on trial for seven criminal counts related to taking money from FTX customers.
Sam Bankman-Fried aspired to one day become president of the United States, his ex-girlfriend and former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison testified in court Tuesday.
"He said there was a 5% chance he might be president someday," Ellison said on the witness stand in the criminal trial against the disgraced crypto mogul.
In her testimony in a downtown Manhattan federal courtroom, the 28-year-old Ellison said Bankman-Fried shared his ambitions with her during their relationship, which moved in fits and starts over the course of about three years. Bankman-Fried sought to become a significant player in the worlds of business and politics, she said.
The former CEO of FTX's sister company first took to the witness stand earlier on Tuesday. She told jurors in the criminal trial against Bankman-Fried that she conspired with Bankman-Fried and other members of his inner circle to defraud customers and investors of FTX, his cryptocurrency exchange.
Ellison pleaded guilty to fraud charges in December and has been cooperating with investigators. Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried is facing seven criminal charges and has pleaded not guilty on all counts.
The two met while working at Jane Street, a quantitative investment firm, while Ellison was an intern and Bankman-Fried was a trader.
Bankman-Fried convinced her to join his own hedge fund, Alameda Research, as a trader. She became a CEO of the company in 2021.
The two began a personal relationship in the fall of 2019, Ellison testified.
"We started sleeping together on and off," she said.
In the summer of 2020, they began formally dating. They broke up and got back together again until the spring of 2022, when Ellison said their personal relationship ended for good. Ellison was still the CEO of Alameda Research, which Bankman-Fried owned and controlled.
Bankman-Fried, 31, has not expressed personal political ambitions in the past. He'd have to be at least 35 years old to run for president. But he had been an active donor to candidates of both major US political parties, and primarily contributed to Democrat candidates.
Bankman-Fried thought political donations were a good investment, Ellison testified Tuesday. She said he believed the millions of dollars he donated to now-President Joe Biden's 2020 campaign had helped get him important recognition.
"He thought it was very effective, that you could get very high returns for relatively small amounts of money," she said.
Last week, Bankman-Fried's biographer, Michael Lewis, revealed that the FTX cofounder even considered paying Donald Trump not to run for office in the 2024 presidential election.
Lewis told "60 Minutes" that the number that was "kicked around" was $5 billion, but he wasn't sure whether the figure had come directly from Trump. A spokesperson for Trump told Insider's Lloyd Lee that SBF has been "outed as a fraudster and someone that can't be trusted."
This story has been updated.