According to Staten Island criminal defense attorney Louis Gelormino, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried broke rule number one upon his arrest: stop talking.
"The first thing we tell our clients in criminal law is, ‘Hey, no more talking,’" Gelormino says on the newest "Tucker Carlson Originals" installment. "That's the first thing, that is rule one."
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson investigates the FTX build-up - and fallout - fueled by its now-disgraced founder in the latest "Tucker Carlson Originals" documentary titled "Scam Bankrupt Fraud: The Story of FTX" on Fox Nation.
‘SCAM BANKRUPT FRAUD’: FTX FOUNDER USED CONFUSING, ‘TECHNOCRATIC JARGON’ TO THROW OFF PUBLIC, INVESTOR SAYS
After the bankruptcy but prior to his arrest, Bankman-Fried went on a publicity tour, doing televised interviews with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal about the allegations against him. The SEC had charged Bankman-Fried in December with fraud and money laundering, reportedly losing $8 billion of customers’ money while running the cryptocurrency exchange.
On Dec. 12, Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas and extradited back to the U.S., where he continued to participate in media discussions about his "mistakes."
"What are your lawyers telling you right now? Are they suggesting this is a good idea for you to be speaking?" Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Bankman-Fried at the DealBook Summit days before his arrest.
"No, they’re very much not," the FTX founder responded.
In a sit-down interview with The Wall Street Journal, Bankman-Fried said: "I ask myself a lot how I made a series of mistakes."
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Gelormino and his colleagues were "shocked" by Bankman-Fried’s willingness to talk to the press while involved in an active criminal case.
"My colleagues and I are shocked that he was still out there giving interviews," Gelormino told Carlson. Hung up high on Gelormino’s office wall is a placard with a taxidermy shark, with a saying underneath that reads: I wouldn’t be here either if I kept my mouth shut.
"The only reason he's out there doing this is to set the narrative," Gelormino said. "The narrative is, ‘Hey, I made a mistake.’"
In a preview that aired Tuesday on the Fox News Channel, Strive Asset Management’s Vivek Ramaswamy honed in on Bankman-Fried's tendency to clutter his sentences with meaningless jargon to avoid admitting wrongdoing when confronted.
"The technocratic jargon is itself part of the smokescreen," Ramaswamy said. "I have a general rule of thumb: If you cannot explain it to a 14-year-old, that means either you don’t understand it yourself or you do understand it, and you’re trying to confuse the audience for a reason that has to do with your own self-interested gain."
"He knew how to play the game to be able to create the appearance that he cared about something other than profit and power when in fact he cared only about more profit and power for himself," Ramaswamy told Carlson in a separate interview on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Tuesday.
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The FTX founder posted a $250 million bond and is awaiting trial on fraud charges at his parents' home in California.
For a deeper dive into Bankman-Fried's background and a rare perspective on the FTX scandal, subscribe to Fox Nation and stream the ‘Tucker Carlson Originals' episode, available to stream now.
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Fox News’ Yael Halon contributed to this report.
