PR move to make him seem impartial, so that people would stop complaining about the donations because some people might type out things like this:
> SBF's political donations are both more evenly distributed than previously reported[1], and seemed targeted more at pacifying potential investigations/regulatory attention than driven by ideological/political concerns.
I don't think he needs this: anybody with more than a passing awareness knows that he's an EA type, and those types infamously cast themselves as "above" the normal political fray. Even before this reporting, I don't think people had strongly held beliefs that SBF's donations to the DNC were anything other than expedient (given that they're the ones in power).
He may not, but people he donated to would like it. The implication here is that we ought not bother looking any further into his claims that his donations might be some form of corruption funded by conning a large number of people out of billions of dollars because 'both sides' benefited financially therefore it is all awash.
> anybody with more than a passing awareness knows that he's an EA type
He's not any type that you or I can "know" because he is a duplicitous conman. Or, I suppose, he is the duplicitous conman type.
At this point, it's up to your own imagination to determine whether or not he was lying about this particular piece of information. You seem to have decided he must be telling the truth because despite all of the other lies about his business, there isn't a logical reason (to you) that he would put out a statement, with no actual evidence, about making "dark" money donations to the other side prior to making massive public donations to the one side during an election year.
Just like you, I don't know if he's lying or not. I do know that if he has a vested interest in confirming his statements, he most certainly could release further documentation showing he made "dark" money donations. I mostly do not believe him because the lack of effort in proving it and the completely stupid notion of referring to his donations as "dark" money, like somehow I'm supposed to believe there's no paper trail, at all, of his donations. This is absurd.
> He's an "end justifies the means" type, and that means you can never trust a damn thing he says, ever.
A very large fraction of the population has personal ethics that boil down to some variant of act utilitarianism/consequentialism. SBF is just the most visible and venal form; it's probably an error to assume that such a broadly held ethical position means that its adherents are incapable of not lying.
He was the second biggest Democratic donor in the 2022 elections, and since he supports the Democrats, he doesn’t want them to suffer any reputational damage from their #2 donor being a notorious con man, so he made up a conveniently unfalsifiable story.
As for what advantage it grants him, just wait and see. Marc Rich got a lame duck pardon from President Clinton in exchange for his generous political donations, so maybe Biden will do the same for SBF.
> He was the second biggest Democratic donor in the 2022 elections, and since he supports the Democrats, he doesn’t want them to suffer any reputational damage from their #2 donor being a notorious con man, so he made up a conveniently unfalsifiable story.
I think these explanations benefit from persona tests: can you think of someone in your life whose political stance is meaningfully affected by either (1) SBF donating massive sums to the DNC (true!), (2) being a scam artist (true!), or (3) potentially having donated equally massive sums to the GOP (maybe!)?
Mine aren't, and I don't think most peoples' are either.
So your contention is that absolutely nobody would care if the Democrats in particular were heavily financed by white-collar crime? And that the Democratic Party doesn't care whether or not they're associated with an alleged, indicted criminal? That's facially absurd. Even if it wouldn't cause anyone to change their vote (which seems unlikely given the marginal-but-still-very-real swings in election results every two years), it would affect enthusiasm and engagement among people who would otherwise support the Democrats. Whereas with this lie about mysterious "dark money" donations to Republicans, most people who support the Democrats will just accept that claim uncritically and continue to support the Democrats because that's the story that minimizes their personal cognitive dissonance.
Also, you need to explain why somebody would donate equally to both parties in the first place, when both parties are engaged in a zero-sum game with each other for control of the federal government.
No: my contention is that nobody seriously believes that the DNC (or GOP) sat down and went "hmm, this is dirty money, but we'll take it anyways." Both do legal and reputational review, and almost certainly determined (correctly!) that both the law and ordinary people distinguish between "scammy but not openly criminal man in scammy industry gives money to politicians" and "definitely criminal man gives money to politicians."
Put another way: we have no special reason to believe that either the DNC or GOP leadership saw SBF as anything more than a convenient piggy bank. SBF in turn probably saw both as insurance, and time will tell on that.
> Also, you need to explain why somebody would donate equally to both parties in the first place, when both parties are engaged in a zero-sum game with each other for control of the federal government.
This is actually pretty easy to rationalize from the EA worldview: if you've convinced yourself that you can maximize good by maximizing your personal wealth (laws and norms be damned), it makes sense to maintain whatever regulatory framework (or lack thereof) enables you to do that. Giving money to both sides is a not unreasonable course of action in that context.
