The mother of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is a law professor and Democratic fundraiser who once wrote an essay decrying “personal responsibility.”

The cryptocurrency platform filed for bankruptcy last week after users discovered that adjacent trading firm Alameda Research had allegedly been using consumer holdings from FTX to make investments. Following the incident, in which billions of customers’ dollars may have been stolen, the life of Bankman-Fried has come under scrutiny.

Barbara Fried, the mother of Bankman-Fried, is a law professor at Stanford University who has written about “questions of distributive justice” in areas such as tax policy and political theory. She also runs a political action committee called Mind the Gap, which fundraises for the Democratic Party among executives in Silicon Valley. The organization raised nearly $4 million in the most recent midterm election cycle, according to data from Open Secrets, which showed that FTX Director of Engineering Nishad Singh made a $1 million contribution.

Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt have also backed the organization, according to a report from Vox, which described one of the entity’s purposes as avoiding “public detection.”

Bankman-Fried himself contributed nearly $39 million to various campaigns during the recent midterm elections, with 99.6% of funds benefiting Democratic candidates, according to more data from Open Secrets, which listed him as the nation’s sixth-largest individual midterm donor. He was previously the second-largest contributor to President Joe Biden amid his successful bid for the White House.

In the days since FTX imploded, a 2013 article penned by Fried in the Boston Review claiming that the notion of personal responsibility has “ruined criminal justice and economic policy” began circulating online. “Public reactions to wrongdoing have been studied most extensively in the context of crime,” she asserted. “Researchers have found that peoples’ evaluations of serious wrongfulness vary significantly across social conditions and individuals. Tellingly, the more information people have about the context of the crime, the person who committed it, and the circumstances he or she came from, the more nuanced are their views of moral responsibility.”

Fried said that harm reduction policies are meant to “reduce future harm at a tolerable cost to all of us, wrongdoers included, by influencing wrongdoers’ future choices through rehabilitation, more carefully calibrated deterrence, and, when necessary, isolation from society.” She nevertheless insisted that her views do not “coddle criminals.”

Whether Bankman-Fried himself will spend time in prison has yet to be determined. The former billionaire is presently located in the Bahamas under supervision from law enforcement, who may transfer him to the United States for bankruptcy proceedings and questions from policymakers. The two nations signed an extradition treaty in 1990.

Joseph Bankman, the father of Bankman-Fried, also works as a law professor at Stanford University and has drafted legislation for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), one of the most ardent skeptics of cryptocurrency in the federal government, according to a report from Fortune. Linda Fried, the aunt of Bankman-Fried, is the dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and a co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Human Enhancement.

John Ray III, the lawyer who is overseeing FTX amid bankruptcy proceedings, said that Bankman-Fried and his associates ran an extraordinarily mismanaged company. “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here,” he wrote. “From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.”

Executives may have spent corporate dollars on purchasing luxury real estate listed under their own names. Leadership at the cryptocurrency venture lacked disbursement controls “appropriate for a business enterprise,” allowing executives to “purchase homes and other personal items for employees and advisors” in the Bahamas, according to Ray.

President Joe Biden says if you are cold and looking for some economic relief, then you just need to spend thousands on retrofitting your home with energy-efficient windows.

Oh, what’s that? You’re saying rent an apartment? Even if you are a homeowner, you’re saying you can barely afford groceries, let alone home upgrades?

Well, Biden doesn’t really care about those concerns. He signed the Inflation Reduction Act and one of the key ways you can save — according to the Democrats — is to take advantage of lucrative tax incentives that require you to spend big chunks of money in the name of climate change.

After bragging about a few different tax rebates offered, Biden told Americans, “If you’re living in a home with drafty windows and doors, starting January 1, you’ll be able to save up to $1,100 on the cost of replacing them. And that’s just on the upgrade.”

The president, the son of a used car salesman, went on to sound exactly like a used car salesman.

“And that’s not all,” he continued. “If you want to install solar panels on your roof, you can get a tax credit for 30 percent of the cost. It’ll bring down the cost of installation by about $7,500.”

How exactly will that help you in the long run?

“And when you get to keep saving money on your electric bills for the remainder of the year, it’s about $300 a year on average,” he noted.

As The Daily Wire has documented, Biden isn’t the only one in his administration constantly bragging about this great economic relief. His energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is big on this stuff, too.

We’ve done it before, but let’s again estimate the costs of a few of the Biden administration’s suggested home “improvements”:

The average energy-efficient window pane costs anywhere from $325 to $1,110, according to Modernize, a home services website. That price range is per window — not for the entire home. Using those figures, on the lowest end of the spectrum, if you had four windows in your home, you’d need to spend at least $1,300 before any labor or delivery costs are even calculated into it. If you did that, you would get a $390 tax credit.

[…]

Looking at Granholm’s home state of Michigan, the average solar-panel system costs roughly $16,020 — pre-federal incentives — according to Consumer Affairs. Again, with a 30% tax credit, you’d receive $4,806.00 back if you spent that kind of moolah.

So, if you’re somebody who lives in a four-window home and wants to purchase a basic solar-panel system and buy some efficient windows – you’ll need to spend $17,320 to “save” $5,196.00. Of course, four-window homes are hard to come by, and if they do exist, it is doubtful that their occupants can afford to spend that kind of money.

So, it is all nonsense. Spend thousands to save hundreds. But, first, you need to buy a home.

Thirty-five percent of Americans rent, many are bleeding through their savings and living paycheck-to-paycheck, and inflation is still sky-high.

But hey, Biden says “there’s a strong sense from all the leaders of the world of the strength of the American economy” — so we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Related: You Have To Be A Wealthy, Partially-Deaf, Green Energy Fanatic To Save Money In Biden’s America