Not only shitty, but opposite of how you'd expect. When a high-profile donor does a high-profile crime—and when they're certainly not going to be a fundraiser in the future—the recipient of those donations has a lot of motivation to distance themselves from the fraudster, to be harsher in their actions, to respond to pressure and sever any perceived ties.
This is a cogent point. Sometimes people see political donations as a suicide pact and they most definitely are not. A politician's deference to a donor is a function of the probability of future donations from them. If that probably drops to zero their deference drops to zero. A donor is only as good as their next donation.
This is true on all sides of the aisle. If SBF hadn't tried to speed run every crypto-scam he might have some political connections left. But he's not just persona non-grata, he's broke. He doesn't have much to offer politicians at this point except testifying against co-conspirators (should there be any).
