Since the beginning of Sam Bankman-Fried’s implosion, the feeble hope among his inner circle of political and philanthropic fixers has been that the widening scandal would be ring-fenced to whatever happened between the sheets at FTX, Alameda Research, and his business empire. In short, whatever the charges against S.B.F.—wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud investors, etcetera—that at least there was no funny business in the corner of his operation that dealt with giving the money away. In fact, just last week Sam addressed this categorically. “Can you confidently say, for the record, that there was no financial impropriety on the political and philanthropic side of your work?” I asked him. “Obviously I’m not omniscient,” he replied, “but I don’t think there was any.”