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Nov. 6, 2023 - The Tucker Carlson Show
12:18
Martin Shkreli's Advice to Sam Bankman-Fried on Surviving Prison

Tucker Carlson is joined by American businessman and convicted felon Martin Shkreli to discuss his controversial sentencing and time in prison. Shkreli also details the advice he gave to convicted fraudster and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried who may face a similar fate. Full interview here: https://x.com/TuckerCarlson Text “TUCKER” to 44055 for exclusive updates #TuckerCarlson #MartinShkreli #SamBankmanFried #SamBankman #FTX #Daraprim #Crypto #Prison #Crime #News #Politics #Interview #Fraud #Advice #finance

Participants
Main
m
martin shkreli
10:40
Appearances
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tucker carlson
dailycaller 01:30
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Speaker Time Text
tucker carlson
So you mentioned you talked to Sam Bankman-Fried about prison.
Can you I don't want to let that go.
Let's back up.
How do you know Sam Bankman Fried?
martin shkreli
You know, he's a young entrepreneur who romanced the Clintons, romanced the world.
He is friends with Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton.
He was a big donor to Democrats.
And he was also a guy at a very young age who had a very big company.
And I know what that's like.
And when he asked me for advice about this, I said, I think you should learn rap music.
I think you should learn slang.
I think you should invent a backstory for yourself where you're not Sam Bankman, the businessman, but you were Sam Bankman from Oakland.
tucker carlson
Wait, so he asked you your advice on prison?
martin shkreli
Something like that, yeah.
And I, you know, one of the questions was, is there internet in prison?
I said, no, Sam, there's no internet in prison.
They found some irregularities in my old hedge funds.
None of my investors ever lost a dime.
In fact, they made quite a bit.
In fact, one of my investors said he made about 30, 40% a year.
Investing in my hedge fund, it was the second best hedge fund he ever invested in his life.
And he'd been a hedge fund investor for 20 years, and he'd invested with Soros and some of the best hedge funds ever.
And, you know, I still went through the ringer.
tucker carlson
So you were charged with securities fraud.
unidentified
Yes.
tucker carlson
Who did you defraud?
martin shkreli
I defrauded the investors that made the 30, 40% a year.
tucker carlson
But I'm confused.
I mean, how can you defraud someone who makes 30 or 40 percent a year?
martin shkreli
So it's funny.
You can be a victim of a crime without necessarily losing anything.
And while the government normally never pursues a case like that, they pursue cases where somebody opens their pockets and says, look, I gave this guy a million bucks.
tucker carlson
Yeah, it's a Ponzi.
martin shkreli
Your million bucks is gone.
And this guy's got a Lamborghini and I have a whole of a million dollars.
What the hell?
And, you know, that's, you know, I think why I was relatively spared on a sentence, even though I thought it was excessive.
I feel like, you know, the government normally never brings a case like that.
And the Southern District is kind of known as the fraud sort of center.
You know, they're pursuing Sam Bankman Fried at the moment.
They hop on these cases.
They love these cases.
The Eastern District isn't really the place to do that.
They mostly deal with visa cases, gun cases, drug cases, things like that, mob trauma.
tucker carlson
So that's Brooklyn, Queens, Rhode Island.
martin shkreli
Yeah, that's right.
tucker carlson
Right, not Manhattan.
unidentified
Yep.
martin shkreli
That was Loretto Lynch's division.
It's a fairly political division.
And the person that prosecuted me is now a partner at a law firm and making a lot more money than he made before.
tucker carlson
So did you sense from the beginning that your prosecution was political?
martin shkreli
Yeah, no, I mean, I know it was.
And when you say political, it's not a left or right thing necessarily.
It's actually more of a status thing.
Every player in this symphony of grift has a different role to play.
And the prosecutor's role is looking out for himself.
He's not interested in the community of New York City being better or worse than it was yesterday.
He's a lawyer from a top law school.
He's trying to make millions of dollars.
And prosecuting Martin Schroud is a great way to do that.
If it happens to make his bosses happy, great.
But politics has nothing to do with his decision.
And damages are the centerpiece of how you get sentenced.
There's actually a rule book, and it's a point system.
It's kind of absurd.
You get seven points off the bat for conviction.
But seven points is almost no time in prison, which is great.
So I said, all right, I'll give you the seven points.
But then on a sliding scale, there's a dollar amount that gives you more and more points.
So Sam Bankman, for example, his fraud amount is $10 billion.
They don't have a section for that.
It's like, you know, off the charts.
Mine was something like seven or eight million.
And there is a section for that.
And it gets you to about 40 years in prison.
40 years?
Sure.
You know, Sam Bankman's going to prison, most likely, for a long time.
Sam's from an upper-class family in California.
He's never been around minorities, let alone Inner city minorities who have a very different way of life.
And when he asked me for advice about this, I said, I think you should learn rap music.
I think you should learn slang.
I think you should invent a backstory for yourself where you're not Sam Bankman, the businessman, but you were Sam Bankman from Oakland.
tucker carlson
Wait, so he asked you your advice on prison?
martin shkreli
Something like that, yeah.
And I, you know, one of the questions was, is there internet in prison?
I said, no, Sam, there's no internet in prison.
You know, you have, if you can smuggle a cell phone in through somebody's butt or something, maybe you can, you know, find a way to get, you know, some cell phone reception.
But no, there's no internet kiosk where you can go play video games.
It's a rough place.
And, you know, I think one of the reasons I was successful in prison, I have many friends from there, is that I understand, you know, I grew up in Brooklyn, melting pot.
I understand minorities.
And I, you know, we had a lot in common.
And commonality is humanity.
And, you know, all the trials and tribulations they would face with their families, I'd face with mine, that commonality existed.
No, they didn't go to college most of the time.
No, we had different levels of education.
But there were a lot of smart people there.
There were a lot of, yeah, sure.
I mean, you know, the circumstances that people can fall into making a left turn or right turn in life, you know, you can make mistakes.
And I think that there are a number of people who have, who've been very successful.
Michael Milken, you know, obviously people like, you know, Charles Kushner.
You know, there are folks who have gone to prison and made a mistake in life.
And the young men mostly who get locked up, who are mostly black or Hispanic, it is a sad thing to see.
And I don't know what the solution is, but I do see that a good 10, 20% of them are really good eggs that kind of just are sorry for what they did.
They felt like they had no choice.
Maybe that's right, maybe that's wrong.
But there are people that probably do deserve a second chance.
And unfortunately, society, every time I read a story about me, it's convicted felon Martin Shkrelli.
And I'm saying, well, why don't you say U.S. patent owner Martin Shkrelly or billion-dollar company starter Martin Shkrelli?
Like, where's that?
Why is it convicted felon?
tucker carlson
So you mentioned you talked to Sam Bankman Fried about prison.
Can you, I don't want to let that go.
Let's back up.
How do you know Sam Bankman Fried?
martin shkreli
You know, he's a young entrepreneur who romanced the Clintons, romanced the world.
He is friends with Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton.
He was a big donor to the Democrats.
And he was also a guy at a very young age who had a very big company.
And I know what that's like.
And he had a much bigger company, 10 times bigger than mine, but not a thousand times bigger.
You know, we're in the same universe.
And, you know, he was just kicking butt.
You know, he was on the cover of Forbes and was all a lie.
And he actually didn't succeed at all, which is ironic.
But he represented this group called Effective Altruism, which has sort of took Silicon Valley by storm.
And me and a few other people created a countergroup called Effective Accelerationism, where we kind of said, we're the diametrical opposite of you guys, and you guys are going to ruin our country if you keep sort of talking about what you're talking about.
And EA, Effective Altruism, has basically died with Sam.
You know, he was laid bare as a fraud.
And I think that whole movement has been laid bare as a fraud.
There's no question.
tucker carlson
It doesn't entail actually helping anyone around you.
martin shkreli
No, no.
tucker carlson
You don't have to tip at dinner or pay your housekeeper a bonus, right?
martin shkreli
What's really funny about effective altruism is that it's a movement for people who can afford to be altruistic.
It only counts if you're a billion.
tucker carlson
The most selfish people in the world seem to love it, I have noticed.
So, but you know him because you disagreed on that?
martin shkreli
No, I started to get to know him when his company was succeeding, and then I really started to get to know him when he got in trouble.
And I think that it's just a sort of sorry situation.
Kind of went through it too, where you just can't believe that this has happened to you and you're in denial that they're going to win.
You know there's nothing you can do about it.
And this is a guy who's gone to every math competition, every mit you know thing and he's been told he's special his whole life and he's in this spider's web of the DOJ indictment where it doesn't matter how smart you are, you cannot think your way out of this.
You're going to jail and you know the one or two cases where you somehow were acquitted was a huge mistake for the DOJ and they went back and studied how that won't.
Happen again.
You know it's.
It's a system designed to incarcerate you and he's been defiant.
He went on a speaking tour, he went on all this stuff.
They had to lock him down to his house uh, on house arrest because he was talking too much, and they finally said, enough, we're tossing you in and it's hard enough to be indicted.
It's hard harder to fight it from inside a jail cell.
It's basically impossible.
tucker carlson
But why can I say?
I always wonder this and i've asked friends of mine who are going to prison this question.
I never get a good answer.
You think you're being unfairly treated.
Most people being prosecuted think they're being unfairly treated.
Sure, some are, some aren't, but they all think they are.
And you think you could spend the rest of your life in prison.
He definitely could spend the rest.
Why don't you flee?
martin shkreli
It's a funny.
It's funny, no one flees, no one flees.
Um, there's this guy who fled and he actually fled successfully and he came back.
My lawyer was his lawyer and he came back and he said, look, you know, the thing you were charged for isn't illegal anymore.
Can my guy come back to the Us?
And judge said, absolutely, if he comes back here, he's got to do another three or four years and they made an agreement to do that.
But it's, it's hard if you're sam bankman with you with his face, to sort of flee and find a place to to flee, and you know they tend to find you.
Um, the government of the U.s.
Stretches to almost every other country in the world.
You know they have uh uh, you know, agreements to send you back, extradite you.
Uh, only three countries don't have those agreements.
So you better be ready to be Edward Snowden in essence, if you want to sort of, you know, have a way to to flee and survive.
And you know, it's just one of these things where you know, as soon as there's a warrant or something like that they, they pay pretty close attention to you.
Fleeing, you know, is also kind of, I think, to a lot of folks a bit of a cowardly kind of way out.
You know, I think that that arrogance that comes with, you know, success in life bleeds over to the system.
Oh, I can beat this, I can find a way to get out of this.
And there is no way out of it.
I think he's learning that the hard way right now.
tucker carlson
So so just to just to wrap up on this, you think there is no way out of it for Sam Bankman.
martin shkreli
Freedom, there's no way out of it for anyone.
You know it's, the justice system is a joke.
It's it's, it's a performative act.
It is no different from a show trial in communist China.
Find me one case where somebody's been acquitted at a federal court.
It is, it is the outlier of outliers.
You know it is.
There's thousands of these indictments every year, tens of thousands, and there's no, there's no acquittals.
You might get acquitted on a charge, as I did, you know, or many of them, but they throw enough spaghetti.
tucker carlson
Why does nobody say this?
I mean you.
There are very few trials, as you point out.
Most people just plead out, but when there is a trial, the media acts as if it's like a cliffhanger.
martin shkreli
It's really funny, because you know it's foregone conclusion and I That there's a mix of things that make these trials unfair.
You know, one of them is this putative burden on the government, which doesn't exist.
So they get to go first.
And if you know anything about behavioral economics or Daniel Kahneman, if you have to sit through five weeks of why this guy's a bad guy, and after five weeks, he gets to speak his piece, it's really unfair because the anchoring principle of I've just heard this guy being bad guy.
tucker carlson
When did you stop beating your wife?
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
martin shkreli
It's just a framing problem, and it's just impossible to beat that.
One of Sam's jurors was sleeping, which is the death knell.
You know, if a juror starts to go to sleep, he's made up his mind to go to jail.
And it's so hard to beat the government at trial that it's virtually impossible.
Again, you have better odds than other countries, which you wouldn't expect.
So I think Sam's in it pretty deep.
And a lot of people think he should go to jail for life or something like that.
And I think he's not maybe as culpable as some people think, but he's certainly culpable.
And I think there's a fair sentence for him.
I can't say exactly what it is, but he's going to get something.
tucker carlson
You don't hear people say the news is full of lies.
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