On Thursday, Peacock launches The Best Man: The Final Chapters, the continuing story of Lance, Shelby, Jordan, Harper, Quentin and the rest of the friends from the hit Best Man films, which started in 1999.
The eight-episode series reunites Morris Chestnut, Terrence Howard, Melissa De Souza, Sanaa Lathan, Harold Perrineau, Regina Hall, Nia Longand Taye Diggs with the franchise’s director, Malcolm D. Lee, and follows the beloved friend group as they navigate middle age.
Long, reprising as Jordan, tells ABC Audio she’s touched the fans’ love kept the series alive. “I feel really humbled by it,” she expresses. “And I also feel like there’s a whole group of men and women that grew up with us. So as we’re having these sorts of ups and downs and experiences outside of playing the characters, so are they.”
Diggs, who plays Harper, agrees, calling the return “seamless.”
“It was weird because whenever we were doing the first, second and third installment, there was always something going on in my life that was very similar to what the character was going through,” Taye says. “So it’s always been kind of easy.”
Howard, who plays Quentin, got emotional about the entire cast returning. “You think about how fortunate we are to be able to come together this late in the game. The year I was nominated for Best Actor, Heath Ledger was nominated. And Philip Seymour Hoffman was also nominated that year. They’re not here anymore. These are the people that was my counterparts. And the likelihood that 20, 25 years later, all eight of us would still be here, still ready to go and do the thing? My God.”
Demi Moore is embracing her daughter’s journey to motherhood and celebrating milestones along the way with her.
In an Instagram post on Wednesday, the actress and author shared a photo of her and her daughters at Rumer Willis‘ ultrasound appointment. Daughters Tallulah Willis and Scout LaRue Willis are also in the photo and are all smiles as Rumer shows off her baby bump.
“Saying hello to the little nibblet!!” Moore wrote in the caption. “It’s an honor to witness your journey into motherhood, and can’t wait to welcome this baby in to the world!”
Rumer replied to her mom’s post, “So grateful for my incredible lineage of women in my family. I love you all so much. This baby is so lucky to have you guys.”
Rumer Willis, 34, announced the news of her pregnancy Tuesday on Instagram with a sweet photo of her baby bump. This will be her first baby with her boyfriend, musician Derek Richard Thomas. Rumer Willis’ baby will also be the first grandchild for her parents, Moore and Bruce Willis.
Moore shared her daughter’s photos Wednesday on Instagram and wrote in the caption, “Entering my hot kooky unhinged grandma era.”
Bruce Willis also has two daughters with his wife, Emma Heming Willis: 8-year-old Evelyn Penn and 10-year-old Mabel Ray.
Last week, Moore shared photos of their blended family celebrating the holidays together.
In November, Rumer made her relationship with Thomas official by sharing photos of the both of them during a fall photoshoot.
2022 has been a breakthrough year for Armani White: he released his smash hit “Billie Eilish,” signed a deal with Def Jam Recordings and performed at the BET Hip Hop Awards, the Made in America Festival, Rolling Loud NY and Jingle Ball. With much accomplished, the star told ABC Audio that he may take a short break, but “probably just for Christmas.”
“It might just be one of those things where I get to hang out for the day and then right back to work,” he said. After all, he has a lot more he wants to get done.
White says he “wanted to have the biggest song of the year” in 2022, which he believes he’s accomplished with “Billie Eilish.” The success of the single has changed his life, making him familiar to a lot more people.
“I can’t go to the grocery store anymore,” he said when asked how his life has changed in the past year. “That’s been the biggest, the biggest pivot in my life is, like, I walk in, they’re like, ‘I know you.'”
Armani’s 2023 goal is even bigger, but he’s confident he can get it done. “I want to just be the biggest artist of next year,” he expressed. “And I don’t know, I think, like, if I did the last one, I think I could do this one.”
‘Tis the season for Christmas movies, and different country stars have different favorites when it comes to cozying up in front of the TV.
Keith Urban favors the classics: “I love A Christmas Story, that’s a good one, and It’s a Wonderful Life, of course,” the singer says in an interview with his label, adding that the latter film inspired him to name one of the musical instruments he plays year-round.
“One of my main guitars is called Clarence, and it’s named after the angel [in It’s a Wonderful Life],” the singer adds.
But not every singer opts for the traditional holiday films. Jon Pardi prefers a movie that’s a little bit raunchier, he reveals.
“Bad Santa’s pretty good,” the singer tells his label, but says he’s got a tamer selection if there are “little cousins” around while the movie’s on.
“Elf is pretty much probably one of the funniest Christmas movies to ever be that new and beat out all of the old Christmas movies,” the star goes on to say. “It is definitely up there.”
This Christmas might be Jon’s last chance to watch Bad Santa for a while. The singer and his wife, Summer, are currently expecting their first child — a baby girl — who is due in early 2023.
(NEW YORK) — Workers at Amazon and Starbucks astonished allies and adversaries this year, delivering landmark labor victories and helping inspire a resurgence of unionization nationwide.
But labor headway at the two companies has stagnated in recent months, jeopardizing the ultimate success of the campaigns and casting the continued growth of the labor movement into doubt.
The downshift in momentum at Amazon and Starbucks owes primarily to the anti-union postures and deep pockets of the corporations, labor experts told ABC News.
The setbacks could deter workers inside and outside those companies from organizing their workplaces, as they weigh the risks of confronting their bosses against the potential rewards, they said. Still, the labor movement remains galvanized by sky-high prices, a tight jobs market and near-historic public approval that should enable continued growth next year, the experts said.
“The workers are stalled at Amazon and at Starbucks,” Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told ABC News. “The companies have a plethora of legal and administrative techniques at their command, and their greatest weapon is delay.”
Despite the challenges faced by headline-grabbing union campaigns, the surge of U.S. labor organizing will persist, he said.
“Inflation has created real pressure on people and a real sense of collective action,” he said.
In the spring, a worker-led independent group unionized a 6,000-employee Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York, the first-ever U.S. union at the company in its history. Since then, however, the Amazon Labor Union, or ALU, has lost two consecutive union elections at other facilities; and certification of the Staten Island victory remains tied up in legal challenges.
“There are going to be ups and downs,” said Seth Goldstein, a lawyer at Julien, Mirer & Singla, who represents the ALU. “It’s a marathon.”
Starbucks workers, meanwhile, unionized more than 260 stores this year but the pace of union elections has fallen significantly and workers have yet to sign a union contract at a single location.
Over the first half of 2022, the National Labor Relations Board received union election petitions from an average of 47 Starbucks stores per month; but over five months ending in November, that election rate dwindled to 11 stores per month, according to data from the NLRB, a federal agency that oversees union elections.
Neither Amazon nor Starbucks responded to a request for comment.
“One of the big effects of Amazon and to some extent Starbucks organizing is it has encouraged other workers to raise their voices and think, ‘oh gee, maybe a union works for us, let’s try to get one,'” Thomas Kochan, a labor researcher and professor emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management’s Institute for Work and Employment Research, told ABC News.
“Workers are now looking around and saying, what’s the use of that?” he added. “If they can’t get a contract why should we go through with all this?”
Defying the apparent loss of momentum at Starbucks and Amazon in recent months, however, a surge in union organizing across the economy has sustained itself.
Over a year-long period ending in September, petitions for union representation jumped 53%, NLRB data showed. Moreover, this year labor unions reached their highest level of public support in the U.S. since 1965, a Gallup poll showed.
The resurgence of union organizing is especially stark in light of a decades-long labor decline that brought the private sector union rate to a record low of about 6% last year, government data showed.
Sara Beth Ryther, an employee at a Trader Joe’s in Minneapolis that unionized in August, said workers at the store draw inspiration from the campaigns at Starbucks stores nearby.
“When we go to Starbucks stores that are unionized around us, we see actions being taken in the workplace and we read about them in the newspaper,” she said. “I think it’s preserving this energy in a way that maybe hasn’t been the case in the past.”
“It’s really important for folks to know how unified many of these labor movements are,” she added.
Across the economy, the sense of company neglect for worker well-being that gave rise to pandemic-era organizing has continued to drive action, Michelle Eisen, a Starbucks employee at a store in Buffalo, New York that organized in December, told ABC News.
Eisen acknowledged setbacks faced by workers nationwide in the Starbucks campaign, citing anti-union efforts undertaken by the company. While those tactics may have dissuaded some workers, they’ve motivated others, she said.
“There’s always a chance some people will say, ‘You know what, this is exhausting and I can’t keep doing this,” said Eisen, a spokesperson for Starbucks Workers United, a labor union. “But I think what we’re seeing is more people willing to fight anyway.”
Three-time Tony winner Patti LuPone will be joining the cast of the upcoming WandaVision spin-off series, Agatha: Coven of Chaos, Deadline reports. LuPone joins Kathryn Hahn, who is reprising her role as Agatha Harkness, and Emma Caulfield Ford, who is expected to reprise her role of Dottie from WandaVision. The new Disney+ series also includes Joe Locke, Aubrey Plaza, Ali Ahn and Maria Dizzia…
Bravo dropped a sneak peek of season 13 of The Real Housewives of New Jersey Wednesday. In addition to covering Teresa Giudice‘s extravagant wedding to Louie Ruelas,the three-and-a-half minute clip teases fights involving fellow cast members Melissa Gorga, Joe Gorga, Frank and Dolores Catania, Margaret Josephs, and Dr. Bill Aydin and Jennifer Aydin. Viewers also get a glimpse at two new cast members — Danielle Cabral and Rachel Fuda. RHONJ season 13 premieres February 7…
(NEW YORK) — Sal, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection employee, was going through a difficult time in his life when he first started at the agency. His mother was being physically abused by her partner, he said — and that was the tipping point.
“So one day at work … I’m just pacing back and forth and I have a miserable look on my face,” Sal, who was not identified by his last name, said during a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) podcast in September 2021. “And someone overheard me say, ‘I want to eat my own gun.'”
His life was saved, he recalled, after a coworker noticed that he wasn’t doing well and called to check in on him. His supervisors came to his apartment and made the decision to take his firearm away, helping him get the help he needed.
He was put on light duty and was able to attend counseling sessions, with people who checked in on him regularly, he said.
On the CBP podcast, Sal said that he and others worried their personal struggles could be a professional liability.
“The big thing is a lot of officers, they think that if they get depressed or they’re going through a difficult time that they can lose their job or that they’re going to be embarrassed,” he said. “And the entire time, that wasn’t the case. If anything, my situation got 10 times better at work because of this.”
He called it a “silver lining.”
“You’re not going to lose your job because you’re going through a difficult time. And there is nothing to be embarrassed about because, I don’t care how much money you have or what your job is or, you know, anything that you do in life — everybody gets depressed. Whether you’re the president of the United States, the biggest rock star in the world, you’re a surgeon. It doesn’t matter,” he said last year. “Everybody gets depressed.”
Though Sal was saved from his crisis, this year saw the most Customs and Border Protection agents die by suicide since 2009 — a total of 14.
CBP Executive Assistant Commissioner Benjamine “Carry” Huffman told ABC News the situation was “concerning” and that he believes there isn’t one factor that’s contributing to the increase in suicides.
Both he and a doctor at the agency, however, highlighted problems with stigma around mental health and the need to encourage officers to get help.
“Law enforcement is a challenging profession,” Huffman said.
“The things that we face and things that we do on a day-to-day basis, that we ask our workforce to do, is very difficult. Whatever crisis the nation is facing, we face it first. Whether it’s this big surge of migrants, whether it’s dealing with the first contact with people with COVID or other disease or whatever is going on. We’re the ones that come see it first, and those things are all contributing factors,” he said.
Huffman said the agency is hoping to destigmatize seeking help when people aren’t feeling well enough to work, including if they are dealing with mental health issues — the very outreach that Sal said last year had helped him. Huffman said he has held 60 town halls over the past year with the CBP workforce.
“We have a culture of toughness,” he explained. “We ask our people to do dangerous things in dangerous places, go places where other people won’t go, do things they won’t do to keep Americans safe.”
The downside, he said, is that sometimes that toughness “deters” people from reaching out — something he said he is trying to change. When an agent breaks their leg or gets a physical injury, they go on leave to get better; and Huffman said there is no difference with mental health.
“If you have some sort of a mental crisis, we need to change the culture where we have that same thought process: You get the help you need to get it fixed, you get back from job and you’re good to go,” he said. “That’s the message we’re trying to say is it’s no different between those things — getting a physical injury or a mental injury — and treat them the same way and just have that same acceptance of your peers.”
The way the agency handled such issues in the past, he said, sometimes made the situation worse. Now, though, officials are trying to empower their officers.
Huffman said the influx of migrants along the southwest border isn’t going to impact the way CBP handles officer suicides, and they are offering the same help as they did before.
CBP is one of the only federal law enforcement agencies to have a suicidologist on staff. His name is Dr. Kent Corso.
“Culture change is by far the biggest challenge,” Corso told ABC News. “And some of the things we’re doing about that [are] we are hiring over a dozen operational psychologists. So these are specialists who are there to help consult with management, with employees. We have a new process in place, a policy that has come out of the commissioner’s office, that teaches managers how to slow the process down.”
When new recruits are at the academy, CBP officials work to make sure to let them know that it is OK to not be OK — part of the shift Corso and Huffman talked about.
Corso said the work environment is contributing to some of the challenges officers are facing.
“The last few years have been unprecedented,” he said, adding, “There are many changes going on. There is high unpredictability. And what we know from the psychology research is that when things become less predictable — that is to say, people perceive less control — it’s just more stressful. Add on to that the idea that everybody’s watching the border, it’s a bit of a fishbowl, if you will, that just makes things difficult.”
(WASHINGTON) — In February, former newspaper executive Kenneth Kurson pleaded guilty to cyberstalking his ex-wife. Months later, rapper Kodak Black was arrested on felony drug charges in Florida before pleading not guilty. And in October, jurors found political operative Jesse Benton guilty of illegally funneling Russian money into a group aligned with former President Donald Trump.
The trio’s circumstances may seem unrelated, but they share one notable link: All were previously granted clemency by Trump while he was in office.
And the list doesn’t end there.
An ABC News analysis of the 238 people who were pardoned or had their sentences commuted during the Trump administration found at least 10 who have since faced legal scrutiny — either because they are under investigation, are charged with a crime, or are already convicted.
Legal experts call this recurring theme unprecedented — but not entirely unexpected, given the former president’s unorthodox approach to the pardon process.
“President Trump bypassed the formal and orderly Justice Department process in favor of an informal and fairly chaotic White House operation, relying in some cases on his personal views and in others on recommendations from people he knew or who gained access to him in various ways,” said Margaret Love, a lawyer who represents clients seeking pardons and a former U.S. Pardon Attorney, a Justice Department appointee who helps advise presidents on grants of clemency.
“So it might have been predicted,” said Love, “that some who made it through that lax gauntlet were going to get in trouble again.”
Friends and allies
Those pardoned by Trump during his term in office included dozens of friends and political allies. The list included celebrities, lawmakers and former aides who had been convicted of crimes ranging from fraud to murder — including four private military contractors who were in prison for murdering 17 Iraqi citizens, including two children, in a 2007 attack in Baghdad.
An analysis by two Ivy League academics determined that just 25 of those 238 pardons went through the Office of the Pardon Attorney, a small enclave within the Justice Department that fields clemency applications and examines the merits of each case before deciding whether to recommend a convict for presidential action. The researchers said that figure represented “an historic low.”
“The process is supposed to be fair, it’s supposed to be careful, it’s supposed to be accurate … and it’s also supposed to be a process that helps predict who is not going to recidivate,” said Larry Kupers, who served as the U.S. Pardon Attorney for more than two years at the beginning of the Trump administration.
Recidivism rates from previous administrations’ clemencies is opaque, as federal agencies don’t keep tabs on clemency grantees after their release. But in one study reviewing former President Barack Obama’s 2014 clemency initiative, which led to sentence commutations for nearly 1,700 federal drug offenders, the independent and bipartisan U.S. Sentencing Commission found only three who had been rearrested by the end of 2017. A Texas woman was rearrested on theft charges less than a year after earning an Obama commutation on her life sentence in 2016, and another Texan pleaded guilty to drug charges less than two years after earning a life sentence commutation under Obama’s 2014 clemency initiative.
Based on news accounts and other available evidence, the number of clemency grantees who have gone on to commit additional crimes remains “incredibly low,” Kupers said.
For Trump-era pardons, however, experts said the numbers seem disproportionately high.
Trump’s inner circle
Chief among those pardoned is Steve Bannon, a former senior White House aide and one of Trump’s highest-profile political allies.
Bannon was found guilty in July of contempt of Congress for his refusal to testify before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, and was sentenced to four months in prison. He also faces charges in New York State for allegedly defrauding donors to the “We Build the Wall” fundraising campaign — the same allegations for which he faced federal charges before Trump intervened with a presidential pardon. Bannon has pleaded not guilty to the state charges.
Two other notable members of Trump’s inner circle, veteran political operative Roger Stone and Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, are also involved in ongoing investigations. Both were prosecuted by former special counsel Robert Mueller — Stone for lying to Congress, Flynn for lying to federal investigators — and were later pardoned by Trump.
A federal appellate judge recently ordered that Flynn must provide testimony to an Atlanta-area district attorney who called Flynn a “necessary and material witness” to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and Justice Department prosecutors investigating the events of Jan. 6 are reportedly examining Stone’s alleged ties to violent extremists who attacked the Capitol.
Mark Osler, a professor at St. Thomas University Law School and an expert on presidential clemency, said many of the Trump-era clemency recipients — particularly those who were prosecuted for crimes they committed while working for Trump, like Stone, Bannon and Flynn — “were people who thought they were above the law already.”
“And Trump, by giving them a pardon after they’d been charged or convicted of a crime, only enhanced that sense of entitlement,” Osler said.
U.S. presidents have, in the past, gone to lengths to avoid the appearance of political patronage tainting the clemency process. George W. Bush went so far as to revoke a pardon one day after granting it, after it came to light that the grantee’s father had donated almost $30,000 to the Republican Party just months earlier.
Some experts ABC News spoke with noted the irony of Trump’s clemency practices, considering his repeated claims to support law and order.
“If the Democratic Party wants to stand with anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters, and flag-burners, that is up to them, but I, as your president, will not be a part of it,” Trump told attendees at the 2020 Republic National Convention. “We must always have law and order.”
Trump has also suggested that he would look “favorably” at pardons for those convicted for their participation in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, if reelected to the White House in 2024.
‘A slapdash approach’
Another notable Trump-era clemency recipient who has since fallen back into legal jeopardy is former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, whose fraud sentence was cut 20 years short by a commutation — but who reportedly remains under federal investigation for unpaid restitution tied to the public corruption charges that in 2013 landed him in prison. A lawyer who has represented Kilpatrick said that outstanding restitution payments for ex-convicts are common, but acknowledged that failure to repay them could leave Kilpatrick in legal jeopardy.
And Jonathan Braun, whose 10-year drug smuggling sentence was cut nine years short by a Trump commutation, is facing lawsuits from the Federal Trade Commission and the New York attorney general’s office for allegedly running a predatory loan scheme targeting small businesses.
Braun “harassed, insulted, swore at, and threatened” his debtors, according to a June 2020 petition filed by the New York attorney general. He allegedly told one small business owner, “I will take your daughters from you,” and told another: “I am going to make you bleed.” In court, Braun has denied these claims and requested a trial.
The lawsuits predate Braun’s sentence commutation, but that he still managed to secure a commutation from Trump in spite of the active suits “shows what happens when you ignore the formal process in favor of a slapdash approach,” said Osler, the presidential clemency expert.
“A trained staff of analysts who specialize in sniffing out facts like this was sidelined, with predictable results,” Osler said.
Some who have faced legal scrutiny since securing clemency have accused prosecutors of pursuing vendettas against Trump. After learning of the charges filed against him by New York state prosecutors, Bannon said, “This is nothing more than a partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system.”
And in August, after federal prosecutors suggested they would seek to re-try Philip Esformes, a Florida-based nursing home business owner, on six hung counts from his 2019 trial after his 20-year fraud sentence was commuted by Trump, a member of Esformes’ legal team said the Justice Department’s “flagrant disregard of President Trump’s clemency order is motivated by acrimony towards him.”
Prosecutors in Manhattan also attempted to target former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort on state mortgage fraud charges after he was convicted in 2019 on similar federal charges — a move widely seen as a means to ensure Manafort would face justice even in the event that Trump pardoned him for the federal offenses. Manafort was indeed pardoned by Trump in December 2020 — and in 2021 a New York appeals court ruled that the state charges should be tossed, citing the state’s double jeopardy rule.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Pardon Attorney’s office says more than 17,000 applicants for clemency remain pending. And while experts agree that the clemency process is in desperate need of an overhaul — many suggest removing it from the Justice Department’s bureaucracy and into its own office — there remains widespread support for the institution and its principles.
Osler said he’s concerned that Trump’s approach to clemency and the subsequent legal travails for some beneficiaries could cause lasting harm to the process.
“It could sour clemency for people who really, deeply, richly deserve it,” Osler said.
Snap, a brand new anthology series, arrives on ALLBLK today.
It was co-created by Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter and actor Eric Benét, who tells ABC Audio the series “is a really interesting look into what we’re going through on this planet, socially, ethically.”
Snap follows a perfectly imperfect god named A.O., who serves as the “moral compass” for the protagonist of each episode and challenges them to take an “ethical inventory” of their life.
“Sometimes the consequences of that ethical inventory is life changing or sometimes life ending,” Benét shares.
Each episode in the series tells a different story and stars talent like Amiyah Scott, Michael Buscemi, Clifton Powell, Tisha Campbell and more.
So, how did the show come about? Benét says the idea came to him during an RV trip with his family and he immediately called his friend, director and Snap co-creator, Devin Hampton.
“I thought it was just going to be like one little short film that we were going to shoot,” Benét explains. “And then, you know, after we saw what we did, it became clearly evident that there are many more stories that could be told through this prism.”
The purpose of all of these stories, says Benét is to remind people “there’s some really important things we need to be paying attention to now.”
“The oceans are literally drying up and we’re living in this crazy distraction,” he says, making note of social media and celebrity gossip. “We need to reevaluate how we see the world and how we can maneuver through all of these obstacles that are in front of us and obstacles that we’re creating right now for the future generation.”
CatchSnap Thursdays on ALLBLK with new episodes weekly.
(NEW YORK) — Sam Bankman-Fried has landed in the U.S. to face federal charges after agreeing to extradition in a Bahamian court on Wednesday.
The disgraced former CEO was put on a U.S. government plane for a flight to New York. He landed in Westchester County Airport.
“I hereby consent in writing to be extradited without formal extradition proceedings,” Bankman-Fried said in a signed affidavit in the Bahamas earlier Wednesday.
He took the witness stand to confirm his signature and that his decision was voluntary.
“I therefore formally commit you to custody while you await your extradition,” Magistrate Shaka Serville said.
The Bahamian Foreign Ministry said the foreign minister signed the warrant of surrender, which allowed the extradition.
The move came a day after Bankman-Fried signed extradition papers in the Bahamas, where he lived in a multimillion-dollar mansion, after waffling on the decision since his initial court appearance last week.
Bankman-Fried was arrested last week in the Bahamas after federal prosecutors in New York filed an eight-count indictment including allegations of fraud and conspiracy.
He had been expected in court Tuesday but did not appear, even as his lawyers and U.S. consular officials waited for two hours.
At a court hearing last week, Bankman-Fried declined to waive his right to challenge extradition to the U.S. However, multiple sources familiar with the matter told ABC News ahead of a court hearing on Monday that Bankman-Fried had reversed his position and was prepared to waive extradition, setting up a move to custody in the U.S.
At the court hearing on Monday, however, Bankman-Fried did not waive his right to deny extradition as expected, instead asking to see a copy of the U.S. indictment and speak to his New York-based attorney.
Bankman-Fried has been held in the medical ward of the island’s Fox Hill prison, after an application for bail was denied when a judge determined he was too much of a flight risk.
In addition to the criminal charges, Bankman-Fried faces related civil lawsuits from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
There are more than $8 billion in customer losses, said Gretchen Lowe of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal agency.
Some crypto traders, who deposited their savings on the platform, fear they may never get their money back.
John Ray, the new CEO of FTX, who oversaw the dissolution of Enron, told members of the House last week that FTX lacked corporate controls to an extent he had never witnessed, characterizing the company’s conduct as “old-fashioned embezzlement.”
“I’ve never seen an utter lack of record keeping,” Ray said. “Absolutely no internal controls.”
Bankman-Fried, in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in November, denied knowing “there was any improper use of customer funds.”
“I really deeply wish that I had taken like a lot more responsibility for understanding what the details were of what was going on there,” Bankman-Fried told Stephanopoulos. “A lot of people got hurt, and that’s on me.”
