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Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, says he's the Republicans' third-biggest donor – but used "dark money" to avoid criticism.

He shared the information in a YouTube interview with journalist Tiffany Fong amid reports that he donated $40 million to the Democrats ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

That made Bankman-Fried the party's number-two donor, behind only George Soros' $128 million, according to OpenSecrets.

But the former CEO of the collapsed crypto exchange has now explained how he donated "about the same amount to both parties this year."

"I've been their third-biggest Republican donor this year as well," he said. 

Bankman-Fried added that this was "not generally known" because "all my Republican donations were dark."

This created financing loopholes because these groups did not have to disclose their donors, giving rise to "dark money" that is called "disturbingly common" by the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice.

Bankman-Fried said he did so to avoid media criticism rather than for regulatory reasons.

"Reporters freak the f*** out if you donate to a Republican," he said. "They're all secretly liberal, and I didn't want to have that fight, so I made all the Republican ones dark." 

"Despite Citizens United being the literally the highest-profile Supreme Court case of the decade and the thing everyone talks about with campaign finance, for some reason in practice no-one can possibly fathom the idea that someone actually gave dark."

Bankman-Fried has been under the spotlight since FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11.