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Sean McElwee is a well-known progressive activist who started the \u201cAbolish ICE\u201d movement and in 2018 founded Data for Progress, a progressive think tank with an emphasis on influencing public policy through polling. DFP quickly embedded itself into the top layers of the Democratic firmament. More recently, McElwee became a close political ally and adviser to FTX founder SAM BANKMAN-FRIED.\xa0\nMcElwee had easy access to the White House and the press. And he made sure they had access to him. He kept an open Slack channel at DFP that became a rolling conversation between McElwee, Biden administration officials, and some well-known reporters.\nOn Saturday, November 12, the day after FTX filed for bankruptcy and SBF resigned as CEO, McElwee abruptly shuttered the Slack channel. Six days later, he and Data for Progress began negotiating his exit from the firm he had built.\xa0\nAt the time, the reported reason for the rupture was that McElwee\u2019s well-known penchant for betting on the outcomes of elections created a conflict of interest for a polling firm. A slew of 2022 DFP polls had a GOP bias, and activists on Twitter\u2014 as well as some prominent Democrats pinging reporters\u2014 asked whether McElwee was cooking DFP\u2019s polls to affect races and cash in.\nSources at DFP insist that this would have been highly unlikely, and that their polls had a GOP bias because of an oversampling of respondents via SMS. In the wake of this, DFP recently adopted a previously unreported \u201cGambling and Wagering Policy\u201d that prohibits employees from betting on anything related to DFP projects or clients.\nThe McElwee-DFP breakup was ugly, but the two sides were trying to negotiate an amicable separation agreement and a severance.\xa0\nThen on Dec. 13, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York unsealed an eight-count indictment against SBF. The first seven counts, which were about financial crimes, garnered the most attention.\xa0\nBut it was the eighth count that turned heads in Washington, alleging a straw-donor scheme in which SBF funneled corporate money to candidates and committees through third parties. And SDNY alleged that SBF had help: SBF \u201cand others known and unknown,\u201d the indictment says, made contributions \u201cin the names of other persons.\u201d\nIn the race to figure out who might have helped SBF make straw donations, McElwee\u2019s name was at the top of the list. The leadership at DFP suddenly feared they could be in the middle of a much bigger scandal.