Welcome back to The Stratosphere. I’m Teddy Schleifer.

Tonight, a scoop surrounding Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison’s support for his favorite ’24 hopeful, Tim Scott. If you missed it, some big news today on the homefront here at Puck—and if you’re looking for more, I guest hosted today’s Pivot pod with my old boss, Kara Swisher.

But first, an update on Sam Bankman-Fried’s latest legal twist…

• The Southern District giveth, the Southern District taketh away. Just when you thought that the circle of political and nonprofit operatives who surrounded Sam Bankman-Fried were going to ride off into the sunset—without being hauled to the witness stand or having their work evaluated by a federal jury—the Southern District said on Tuesday that, actually, they were going to try S.B.F. on campaign-finance violations.

  Two weeks ago, you’ll recall that prosecutors there agreed to drop the eighth count against S.B.F. because of a technicality—the feds had to honor the extradition agreement that they had signed with the Bahamas, which sent S.B.F. to the U.S. to face only seven, specific charges last year. But then on Tuesday afternoon, prosecutors unexpectedly told the court that they were going to fold the core campaign-finance allegations (using customer deposits to buy political influence, and then executing a straw-donor scheme) into the existing seven counts of wire fraud, money laundering, etcetera, that the Bahamian government did approve.

  We’ll have to see whether the superseding indictment next week is essentially a copy-and-paste job from the eighth count of the last indictment, or actually introduces anything new. But one credible theory is that this new indictment is a roundabout way for prosecutors to incorporate whatever incriminating evidence and witnesses they already collected this year on S.B.F.’s political operation, even if they’re not charging him on a campaign-finance violation itself. One of those witnesses, it seems? Ryan Salame, the Republican mega-donor who Bloomberg reported today is now in “talks” (whatever that means) for a plea deal focused in part on campaign-finance violations. I look forward to seeing all the Republicans who attacked S.B.F. for his Democratic political crimes voicing outrage at a similar volume.

Ellison’s conspicuous absence during this reporting period wasn’t an accident. It was, I’ve learned, part of an intentional strategy. Ellison has already decided to make a massive donation to Scott’s super PAC, which should be wired soon if it hasn’t landed in his account already. The commitment, described to me as a planned eight-figure contribution, would be at minimum the second largest contribution in the Republican presidential primary thus far. If the gift eclipses the $20 million given by Robert Bigelow to boost Ron DeSantis, it would be the single biggest check of the entire 2024 race.

These sorts of games aren’t uncommon among sophisticated big-money operatives. By delaying his next check until after the deadline, it will be months before Scott’s rivals know exactly how much Ellison donated, exactly how much money the super PAC has on hand, and exactly how much the groups are prepared to spend on Larry’s behalf. (I know that even some people working with the PAC are still in the dark.) That sort of strategic ambiguity is all upside for Scott: After all, there’s essentially zero difference between an ad-buyer having money to play with on June 29 versus July 2, but it makes a hug difference in terms of his team’s ability to manage expectations, control the media narrative, and confuse Scott’s rivals.

Other Scott hands have turned into amateur paid-media trackers and campaign-finance sleuths, deducing that there had to be a major check cut sometime after June 30, given that the Scott super PACs announced a $40 million advertising campaign when they only had about $15 million cash on hand. “I would assume that Ellison cut a massive check on, like, July 1,” said one of these chin-scratchers close to the operation. “It must be.”

Until somewhat recently, even Scott could only guess what Ellison’s total pledge might be. He didn’t launch his campaign with a handshake commitment from Ellison for any particular dollar amount, as I previously reported. Ellison himself didn’t have any of the details figured out, according to a person who talked with him. “There’s no man with a plan,” that person told me earlier this year. One person working with Scott told me last week they thought Ellison would eventually give at least $30 million to the super PAC this cycle.