♪ ♪ [ ticking ] attorney general merrick garland has said little about the justice department

prosecutions of donald trump and hunter biden. tonight he tells us about the principles that guide him and how he would deal with political interference. >> if necessary, i would resign, but there is no sense that anything like that will happen. [ ticking ] as a "60 minutes'" camera rolled and michael lewis took more note, former crypto mega billionaire sam bankman-fried shuffled cars and jackhammered his legs avoiding eye contact. today he's trying to avoid prison. >> you had so much access to sam bankman-fried writing this book. what, ultimately, is the purpose here? >> there's going to be a trial and the lawyers are going to tell two stories. so there's a story of war going in the courtroom, and i don't think either one of those stories are as good as the story i have. >> i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm bill whitaker. >> i'm anderson cooper.

>> i'm sharyn alfonsi. >> i'm john wortheim. >> i'm celia vega. >> i'm scott pelley. those stories and more tonight on "60 minutes." [ ticking ] geneneralized mymyasthenia g gs made m my life a l lot harde. but ththe pictcture startetd chananging when i statarted on vyvyvga. vyvgvgart is foror adults h generalizezed myasthenenia grs who are e anti-achrr antibodydy positivee . in a a clinical l trial, vyvgarart significicantly imprd momost particicipants' abibiy to do dadaily activivities whwhen added t to their currrrent gmg trtreatment. most pararticipantss tataking vyvgagart alsoso had less s muscle weaea. and your v vyvgart treatmtment schedudule is desigigned just f for . in a c clinical ststudy, the mt commmmon side efeffects incld ururinary and d respiratorory t infectionsns, and headadach. vyvgart mamay increasese ththe risk of f infection.. tellll your doctctor if you e a hihistory of i infectis or symymptoms of a an infect. vyvgarart can caususe allergrgic reactioions.

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ththat protetects all l of goe alsoso defendsds the sysystems g amamerica's s infrastrtruct. for ththese servrvices. for the e 336 millllion of us liliving herere. ♪ not since watergate has an attorney general been at the center of such a fire storm. merrick garland's justice department is prosecuting both former president trump and the son of president biden. caught in the middle is this 70-year-old former prosecutor and well-respected judge with a long history as a moderate.

we met garland friday in washington. he told us that he devoted his life to the rule of law because of his family's struggle to escape the holocaust. now he's responsible for prosecutions that will shape the future of the nation. in a rare interview, the attorney general told us that in the trump and biden trials ahead, his prosecutors will pursue justice without fear and without favor. >> we do not have one rule for republicans and another for democrats. we don't have one rule for foes and another for friends. we don't have one rule for the powerless or one rule for the poor or the rich. we have one and that's we follow the facts and the law and we reach the decisions required by the constitution and protect civil liberties.

>> are you essentially saying, as attorney general, to the american people, trust me? >> well, in the end i suppose it does, in the end, come down to trust. it's not just me. it's decades of the norms of this department that are part of the dna of the career prosecutors who are running the investigation and supervising the investigations that you're taking about. >> former president trump faces two federal trials. one for allegedly hoarding classified documents and covering it up, the other for allegingly conspireing to seize power after the 2020 election. attorney general merrick garland has said little about this, we power after the 2020 election. attorney general merrick garland has said littledly conspireing power after the 2020 election. attorney general merrick garland has said little about this, we wanted to understand why. >> i think the first thing to understand is because these are pending cases, two federal indictments and the long-standing rule in the justice department is that we can't comment on pending cases. >> where does that rule come from? >> one is to protect the privacy and liberties of the person

under investigation. it's to protect witnesses who also may or may not become public later in an investigation, and then finally, it's to protect the investigation itself. investigations proceed in many different directions, eventually coming to fruition or decision to charge or not charge about a particular thing or not, and if witnesses and potential subjects knew everything that the investigators had previously looked at and were about to look at, it could well change testimony. it could well make witnesses unavailable to us. >> and this is not peculiar to the trump investigations? >> this is a rule for all investigations. this is part of what we call our justice manual. it's been there for at least 50 years or probably longer than that. >> help us understand the timing. these prosecutions of the former president are happening during the campaign. you could make the argument that it's the worst possible time. >> the justice department has

general practices about not making significant overt steps or charging within a month or so of an election. we're clearly outside that time frame in these cases. prosecutors, special counsel, they followed the facts and the law where they lead, when they've gotten the amount of evidence necessary to make a charging decision and they've decided if a charge is warranted that's when they bring their cases. >> the investigation itself has determined the timing? >> yes, exactly right. >> your critics say that it's time to ruin mr. trump's chances in the election. >> well, that's absolutely not true. justice department prosecutors are nonpartisan. they don't allow partisan considerations to play any role in their determinations. >> the prosecutor in the trump cases is jack smith. he was named by garland to be special counsel.

that's a job under the regulations of the justice department designed to give smith broad independence from the department and from the white house. >> the most important aspect of the regulations is that the special counsel is not subject to the day-to-day supervision of anyone in the justice department. >> you are not in communication with the president or any member of his administration with regard to the investigation of former president trump? >> no, i am not. >> if president biden asked you to take action with regard to the trump investigation, what would your reaction be? >> i am sure that that will not happen, but i would not do anything in that regard. if necessary, i would resign. but there is no sense that anything like that will happen. >> have you ever had to tell him, hands off these investigations, mr. president? >> no because he has never tried

to put hands on these investigations. >> separately, president biden himself is the subject of a special counsel investigation into whether he improperly held classified documents after he was vice president. his son, hunter biden, is the target of a four-year investigation into his business deals and his taxes. he's been indicted for lying about drug abuse when he bought a gun. republicans accused special counsel david weiss of slow walking the hunter biden investigation. the allegation is, mr. attorney general, that what is described in some quarters as the biden justice department, is taking it easy on the president's son. >> well, look, this investigation began under david weiss. david weiss is a longstanding career prosecutor, and he was

appointed by mr. trump as the united states attorney for the district of delaware. i promised at my nomination hearing that i would continue him on in that position, and that i would not interfere in this investigation. >> you are not participating in the decisions? >> no, mr. weiss is. >> the white house is not attempting to influence those decisions? >> absolutely not. >> and he said we won't have to take his word for it. under justice department regulations a special counsel must write a final report. >> which i will make public to the extent permissible under the law, that it is required to explain the prosecuting decisions, the decisions to prosecute or not prosecute and the strategic decisions along the way. usually the special counsels have testified at the end of their reports and i expect that will be the case here. >> how's your relationship with the president? it must be frosty. >> i have a good working relationship with the president.

>> good, perhaps, but maybe not close. the president addressed the question in august when he spotted garland at a white house event. >> attorney general garland haven't seen you in a long while, good to see you. secretary of homeland, you think i'm kidding. i'm not. [ laughter ] >> attorney general garland leads 115,000 employees, prosecutors agents of the fbi and other federal law enforcement. additional security is now assigned to protect judges and prosecutors after the trump cases drew death threats. political violence is among garland's gravest concerns. >> people can argue with each other as much as they want and as vociferously as they want but one thing they cannot do is use violence or threats of violence to alter the outcome. the most important aspect is the american people themselves.

the american people must protect each other. they must ensure that they treat each other with civility and kindness, listen to opposing views, argue as vociferously as they want, but refrain from violence and threats of violence. that's the only way this democracy will survive. >> why do you feel so strongly about that? >> well, i feel it for a number of reasons, and a number of things that i've seen, but for my own family who fled religious persecution in europe and some members who did not survive when they got to the united states, the united states protected them. it guaranteed that they could

practice their religion, they could vote, they could do all the things they thought a democracy would provide. that's the difference between this country and many other countries. and it's my responsibility, it's the justice department's responsibility to ensure that that difference continues. that we protect each other. >> two of your ancestors were murdered in the holocaust. >> yes. >> is that why you devoted yourself to the law? >> yes. that's -- i would say that's why i devoted myself to the rule of law, to public service, to trying to ensure that the rule of law governs this country and continues to govern this country. >> merrick garland has spent a life in the law. >> m-e-r-r-i-c-k g-a-r-l-a-nd. he's the associate deputy attorney general. >> at justice he oversaw the

oklahoma city bombing case, an act of political terrorism. later, after nearly two decades as a federal appeals court judge he was nominated to the u.s. supreme court by president obama, but republicans stalled the nomination for ten months until donald trump was sworn in. president-elect biden picked garland for attorney general on the same day the capitol was attacked. that became one of the largest investigations in the department's history. >> we've arrested and brought charges against more than 1,100 people. there are more to come. the videos that every single person happened to have on their phones, that security cameras had, that bystanders had, that media had at the time disclosed faces, some of which we have not yet been able to connect to people. >> you're looking for new suspects, new defendants still?

>> yeah. it's not that there are new suspects, but there are people that we haven't found yet. >> why do these prosecutions mean so much to you? >> because this is a fundamental aspect of our democrat see. if we can't ensure that this kind of behavior doesn't recur it will occur. prosecutions we bring are deterrents that will keep that from happening. >> garland knows he'll be vilified regardless of how the cases are decided. his job was to take the arrows for the department. he has learned to embrace the pain that comes with the job. >> the youngest is ryan mitchell, forever 8 months old. >> we saw that at de aheadquarters where he was surrounded by those lost to the opioid epidemic -- >> attorney general merrick garland. >> -- and their grieving families. meeting them he told us reminds us why he fights and whom he is fighting for. >> thank you for being here and

listening to us. >> i represent the american people. i don't represent the president, i represent the american people. and likewise, i am not congress' prosecutor. i work for the american people. and if democracy is an emotional subject for merrick garland, maybe it's because he has witnessed how suddenly ican be threatened. in oklahoma city and washington d.c. >> when the history of this extraordinary time is written, what is the best that merrick garland can hope for? >> i think it's the best any public servant can hope for that we've done our best, that we pass on a justice department that continues to pursue the rule of law and protect it. and it's the same thing that every generation has to hope. that we can pass our democracy on in working order to the next

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michael lewis has made a literary career finding jump off the page characters and using them to help tell complicated stories and what can be more complicated than explaining cryptocurrency? lewis gained all-hours access to sam bankman-fried, known at the time as the j.p. morgan of crypto. as unlikely celebrity, his life braided finance, politics, sports and pop culture, then the empire crumbled and today bankman-fried sits in jail various federal charges and faces potential sentences of more than a hundred years. lewis didn't panic just went where the story took him. his latest book "going infinite"

comes out tuesday which is also the opening day of the trial of sam bankman-fried. >> you had so much access to sam bankman-fried writing this book. what ultimately is the purpose lear? >> i realized i had an ambition to the book. i saw it as a letter to the jury. there's going to be a trial and the lawyers are going to tell two stories. so there's a story war going on in the courtroom and i think neither one of those stories is as good as the story i have. >> michael lewis didn't set out to write this book. two autumns ago he was at home in the bay area when he got a call from a friend interested in investing with the young billionaire. could lewis meet with this wonder kid and size him up? so it was lewis brought sam bankman-fried here in the berkeley hills for a hike in the park. >> you have to remember, i knew nothing about him. i knew i was supposed to evaluate his character and 18 months earlier he had nothing now he had $22.5 billion and was the richest person in the world under 30.

he didn't spend care to spend it on yachts. he was going to spend it to save humanity from extinction kind of thing.yachts. he was going to spend it to save humanity from extinction kind of thing. the whole walk my jaw was on the floor here. >> as an author whose interest is finding characters, is your story meter starting to beep now? >> it was on red alert. i said to him, i don't know what's going to happen to you. something's going to happen to you? can i ride shotgun? riding shotgun was like hanging on for dear life in an automobile going 270 miles an hour and taking every hairpin turn at 100 miles an hour. >> they would end up meeting more than 100 times over two years, speaking for countless hours. as our camera rolled in july, note how sam bankman-fried shuffled cards, and jackhammered his legs and avoided eye contact. lewis considers bankman-fried

the most interesting and challenging character he's aut authored since the 1908s. >> the story of sam's life is people not understanding him. misreading him. he's so different, so unusual. in a funny way the reason i have such a compelling story is i have a character that i do come to know and the reader comes to know that the world still doesn't know. >> a graduate of m.i.t., bankman-fried saw the world in numbers framing everything in his life as a probability exercise, including philanthropy. he committed to making as much money as possible so he could give it away as efficiently as possible guided by a social move, effective altruism. >> what it means in sam's instance is you can go out have a career you do good, be a doctor in africa or go make as much money as possible and pay people to be doctors in africa.

if you're a doctor in africa you end up saving a certain number of lives, but you're only one doctor, but if you can pay 40 people to become doctors in africa, you will save 40 times the number of lives. >> this is like a strategy game. >> you don't understand sam bankman-fried unless you understand he turns everything in a game. everything is game phied. >> he moved to berkeley at age 25 to start his own trading firm, alameda research. en stead of buying and selling stocks or bond, he would traffic in crypto, a digital form of currency not tied to a centralized system. >> the basic idea was to be the smartest person in the crypto markets. market to be the one who did the trading in crypto that the smartest wall street trade es did on stocks. >> so he was going to bring this new ascending crypto world? >> correct. >> what's the difference between crypto finance and regular fitness.

>> the promise of crypto finance is the promise of absence of intermediaries. if i want to wire you money, a bank has to do it, wire you the transaction, they take a slice of it. if i want to wire you $10,000 of bitcoin, i hit a button and you get it. so removing the institutions. >> crypto took hold as an anti-establishment punk rock version of a financial system which lewis finds ironic. in the beginning especially it's a crowd of people who are incredibly mistrustful of institutions. what attracts them to it, they hate the government, banks. but then somehow this pool of mistrustful people proceed to trust each other in ways i wouldn't trust you. >> they're parking their money in a sector that's unregulated. there are no physical properties. >> provably squirrely and unreliable over and over. >> predicated on trust. >> they are charlie brown kicking the football. >> right. >> they are sure that this time lucy's going to hold it. >> still sam bankman-fried made a fortune at alameda research

and then he really got rich. instead of simply trading, bankman-fried seized on the idea of opening his own cryptocurrency exchange. >> one of the thing he notices is all of the crypto exchanges are screwed up in one way or another. there's dozens of places for it but it's not structured. he realizes if you built a better exchange -- he wanted to build an exchange he could trade on so he creates ftx. once he created it, it went boom. when it went boom he realized that's the gold mine. it actually isn't trading the crypto. >> this is owning the casino. >> he started as a gambler and realized owning the casino would be more valuable. >> soon, roughly $15 billion a day in trades were executed on his new exchange, ftx. >> if you're sitting in the

middle of those transactions you're taking out even a tiny fraction of the percentage point there's a lot of money to be made. >> indifferent to the outcome of the trade. >> you're taking no risk, no risk at all. it didn't matter if crypto went up or down, as long as people were trading crypto it made money. it's the best business. i had one venture capitalist tell me that several venture capitalist that they thought sam would be the world's first trillionaire. they're looking for the next google, apple. they thought ftx had that ability. they thought it was the single most important institution in the world. >> as he began accumulating billions as if the they were pokemon cards, bankman-fried began attracting something else he wasn't accustomed to -- attention. >> he never goes on tv and he goes on tv with his cargo shorts and messy hair and playing video games while he's on the air. >> wait, he's playing games on

the air? >> you can see his eyes going black and forth because he's trying to win the video game the same time he's on the air. >> whether it was his smarts, his indifference to appearance or vast wealth and the beautiful people found him irresistible. >> as his net worth go up so does his social capital. you write about a zoom meeting. >> he said i have to do a zoom. what is it? he says, it is this person named anna wintour. >> he had no idea who she was. >> i sat off to one side where she couldn't see me, and i watched this. >> what does ana wintour want to do with sam? >> exactly. he's the worst dressed person in america, the worst dressed billionaire in a history of billionaires. she wants him to host the met gala or great ball she throws every year which is all about dress and appearance. so a person who had nothing, has

now seemingly infinite dollars and willing to give it away and doesn't ask a lot of questions. what that attracts, who shows up, everybody. >> everybody comes to the trough. >> everybody wants to be his best friend. >> ftx is the safest and easiest way to buy and sell crypto. >> bankman-fried wanted it known that ftx was the go-to player in crypto. >> i'm shaquille o'neal and i'm excited to partner -- he turned to the sports world to bring his exchange legitimacy and edge. lewis saw the documents. >> he paid tom brady, $55 million for 20 hours a year. he paid steph curry, $35 million same thing for three years. >> a pretty good hourly wage. >> he spent $ 00 million and something dollars for buying the naming rights for the miami heat arena. he made a super bowl ad for larry david that he he paid him $10 million. it's breathtaking what's on that

list. >> did any of the people surrounding him, these celebrities, do it because they found him interesting or is it all because he's worth 20-some billion dollars. >> probably not worth me speaking for them but i will. tom brady i think adored him. thought he was an interesting guy liked to hear what he had to say. >> what's up, guys? i'm here with my boy, sam from ftx. and he really liked tom brady. he wasn't a big sports person so it's funny to watch that interaction. these two people actually get along. the class nerd and the quarterback -- >> the two high school tribes. the nerds of all nerds, even the nerds don't hang out with the nerd he's such a nerd. the quarterback somehow likes him and he somehow likes the quarterback. >> lewis writes in his book that bankman-fried's philanthropic ambitions kept pace with his wealth. never mind doctors in africa, he set to look at existential threats to all of humidity. >> sam bankman-fried ends up

with a portfolio heavily concentrated in two thing, pandemic prevention because there really are things the government should be doing and the other thing that made his list that was so interesting was donald trump. he took te view that the big existential problems are going to require the united states government to be involved to solve them and if the democracy is undermined, we don't have our democracy, all the problems are not going to be solved he saw trump under mining our democracy and thought he's on the existential list. >> to that end he writes in 2022 bankman-fried met with the unlikely ally, republican minority leader mitch mcconnell. >> you're flying with sam and he tells you about a meeting he'll have with mitch mcconnell. >> it starts before we even get on the plane. he comes tumbling out of the car and he's in his cargo shorts and t-shirts. and balled up in his hand -- takes me a while to see what it is. a blue suit.

more wrinkles than any blue suit has ever had. it's jammed into this little ball and a shoe, like, falls out of the pile and he's got it in his arms. i say why do you have the suit? he says, mitch mcconnell really cares what you wear when you meet with him and he's having a dinner in six hours with mitch mcconnell. you have a suit, do you have a belt? no. do you have a shirt? no. no shirt. the suit you can't wear that suit. he goes, yeah, they told me to bring a suit. >> according to lewis, bankman-fried wanted to help mcconnell fund republican candidates at odds with donald trump. >> what is the subtext of this dinner is sam is going to write tens of millions of dollars of checks to a super pac that mitch mcconnell is then going to use to get elected people who are not hostile to democracy. >> so mitch mcconnell has a list of republican candidates who are sort of on the playing field for democracy verse us what he deemed outside.

>> he and his people had done the work to distinguish between actual deep trumpers and people just seeming to approve of donald trump, but were actually willing to govern. >> bankman-fried ended up giving multimillions in support of republican candidates. back in 2020, bankman-fried had ranked among joe biden's biggest donors. as 2024 approached, he planned on spending more, albeit in the most unconventional way. >> one of the shocking passages in this book came, i thought, with the revelation that sam had looked into paying donald trump not to run. >> that only shocks you if you don't know sam. sam is thinking we can pay donald trump not to run for president. like how much would it take? >> did he get an answer. >> he did get an answer. there was a number that was kicking around, a number that was kicking around when i was talking to sam about this was $5 billion. sam was not sure that number came directly from trump. >> so sam is looking into paying trump not to run. and he actually -- it may not have come from trump himself,

but he got a price? >> he got one answer, yes. the question sam had is not just is $5 billion enough to pay trump not to run, but was it legal? >> why didn't it happen? why didn't he follow through. >> they were having the conversations when ftx blew up. why didn't it happen? he didn't have $5 billion anymore. >> approached for comment, by 60 minutes neither former president trump or senator mcconnell responded. last november, mega billionair sam bankman-fried lost nearly everything and faced an onslaught of federal charges. when we return, the fall of sam bankman-fried. [ ticking ]

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bankman-fried was, the fall came faster still. in several days, he became a pariah has federal prosecutors mounted a case against him. in his book out this week, michael lewis details the crash and leaves it to readers to decide if sam bankman-fried was a cryptocurrency con man in karg's shorts or a really smart guy singularly ill-equipped to run and manage a business. >> by spring of 2022, sam bankman-fried had planted his flag in the bahamas. he decided to move his high-flying cryptocurrency exchange ftx to the islands, not for the beach e but for the friendly regulatory climate. with the prime minister on ha hand they put shovels in the ground for new headquarters. bankman-fried discussed paying off the $9 billion national debt of the country. by this point michael lewis and sam bankman-fried had a dynamic that went beyond author/subject.

>> he started using me as a sounding board. >> for what? >> for decisions he was making? should i join elon musk in buying twitter? mostly my answers were no. he told me i was a boring grown up. >> bankman-fried told lewis anyone over 45 was useless. but lewis noted if ever there was a leader in need of adult input it was sam bankman-fried. >> what kind of manager was he? >> horrible. even his best friends inside the company said sam is not built to manage people. >> had sam managed anything before? >> his sole role of leadership was running puzzle hunts for math nerds in high school and actually thought deep down, if you asked him, people shouldn't need to be managed. so he proceeded to act on that and basically didn't manage

them. >> is there any checks and balances happening in this environment then? >> what checks and balances would you imagine there might be in a corporation. >> chief financial officer? >> no. >> h.r. department. >> no. >> compliance office. >> oh, no. there was no board of directors. rather, i asked sam, who is your board of directors and he said we don't really have one. i said what do you mean you don't have one? there are two other people on something called a board of directors and it's changed and i don't each know their names and their job is to docusign. >> he didn't know the names of the board of directors? >> no. >> he's spreading this like a lemonade stand and it could be a publicly traded company if he wanted to. >> if it was, it would be a publically traded company with $40 billion. it was all sam's world and there was nobody there to say, like, don't do that. >> ftx purchased a $30 million executive penthouse in the ush with an exclusive marina. it was lost on sam who worked in

the office and slept in a bean bag chair. there was another reason he avoided the luxe penthouse, his give, caroline henderson, a former wall street trader herself, kicked him out. and he put her in charge of running alameda research, bankman-fried's privately held trading firm. >> so the romance between sam and caroline goes sideways. how does that impact what happens to ftx and alameda research? >> coincidentally the romance more than goes sideways. they have a falling out where they're not speaking to each other. she's not speaking t to him at precisely the time crypto collapses. >> explain why it's a problem. >> it's a problem because alameda research is one of the traders on ftx. >> translation, though bankman-fried owned the ftx exchange, he was also trading crypto on ftx through his own business, alameda research. >> he was gambling in his own casino.

and it created conflicts of interest. >> he owns the casino but still gambling? >> yes. he didn't stop gambling. >> the value of crypto had been eroding throughout the summer of 2022, then came a one-two punch, a leak of alameda's unflattering balance sheet in early november and days later jiang pen shahho took to twitter to question ftx's viability. this triggereded a classic panic run, digital style on ftx. >> how fast was money flowing out of ftx? >> in a run, a billion dollars a day was leaving. >> a billion dollars a day. >> yes. >> it unravels because the depositors want their money back and it's not all there. >> it wasn't there in large part because the money intended for ftx wound up in bankman-fried's privately held fund, alameda research, more than $8 billion. >> do you think he knowingly

stole customers' money? >> put that way no. there's another side of this. in the very beginning, if you were a crypto trader and wanted to trade on ftx and wanted to send dollars or yen or euros on to the exchange so you can buy crypto, ftx couldn't get bank accounts. so alameda research, which could get bank accounts, created bank accounts for people to send money into so that it would go to ftx, but it was held in alameda research. alameda research bank account, and $8 billion-something dollars piles up inside of alameda research that belongs to ftx customers that never gets moved. >> never gets transferred. >> never gets transferred. >> that's a problem. >> it's a huge problem. >> what's the toughest question that sam will have to answer? >> how do you know $8 billion that's not yours is in your private fund? i mean, really. how do you not know? explain. $8 billion is in your private fund that belongs to other people, and you say you don't

know? please explain how that's possible? >> did you do that? >> yes. he said when it's in there, it was a rounding error. i thought it was infinite dollars in there. >> i can see people watching going come on, this is elizabeth holmes in cargo shorts. this is all a ruse, and it's a bad schtick and a bad actor. >> it's different supplying phony medical information to people that might kill them and in this case what you're doing is possibly losing some money that belonged to crypto speculators in the bahamas. on the other hand, this is not to excuse. he shouldn't have done that. >> early in the morning on november 11th, sam bankman-fried reluctantly docusigned ftx into bankruptcy. it had taken five days for ftx to implode. >> you go back to the bahamas as pompeii is falling. what did you see as you landed? >> i got back on the friday of the collapse. it was the afternoon that sam signed the bankruptcy papers.

by then they did a mass exodus. most employees had fled and fled in a way -- kind of a ridiculous way. they took the company cars and ditched them at the airport with keys inside. >> get the hell out of there. >> nobody knew what happened, but they were scared that they were going to be detaineded by the local authorities. we drove into the lot and sam bankman-fried is walking loops around the parking lot. he had been brought over there earlier to be interviewed by bahamas authorities and nobody had given him a ride home and he was just sitting there all alone. >> how do you divorce michael lewis the empathic human being to michael lewis the journalist and author who recognizes what a third act this is. pretty dramatic, right? >> if i was a better person i would have been deeply distressed by all of this. it took about a nano second before i thought, oh, my god, this is an incredible story. >> a month later bankman-fried was arrested in the bahamas and sent to new york to answer

to federal charges that he's used customer deposits to finance billions of capital investments and real estate purchases and political donations. what's your response to someone who hears this and says it's a fun story and it's crypto in the bah ham abu this is the oldest architecture of of a financial collapse that's been going on for centuries? >> this isn't a ponzi scheme, when you think of it, bernie madoff, there's no real business. the dollar coming in is being used to pay the dollar going out. in this case, they had a great real business. if no one cast apersians on the business, and if there hadn't been a run on customer deposits, they'd still be making tons of money. >> in the hollywood, and sports arenas suddenly it was sam bankman-who? >> he becomes toxic. like, nobody wants to talk to him. he has no friends. you saw everybody who rushed in, rushed out.

>> how did tom brady react to this? >> it was sadness. he really liked him and he really liked the hope he brought. a lot of people wanted there to be a sam, you know? there's still a sam bankman-fried shaped hole in the world that needs filling. that character would be very useful to have. >> what he represented. >> what he wanted to do. and brady was, i think, crushed and as time has gone by and he's ceased to get a good explanation about what happened. i think he's just, like, he tricked me. i'm angry. i don't want to have anything to do with him anymore. >> starting in december, lewis drove the 35 miles from berkeley to stanford where bankman-fried was living with his parents, who were also ensnared in legal proceedings tied to ftx. out on bail but wearing an ankle monitor, he left the door open for lieues so they could continue their conversations. we anticipated speaking to friedman, but the judge in the

case instituted a gag order and then put him in a brooklyn jail for violating terms of his release. bankman-fried had pled not guilty. >> he thinks he's innocent. i can tell you his state of mind four or five months ago. you offered me plead guilty and do six months of house arrest, i would still say no. >> what do you think the fear is having to go to prison? >> not having the internet. that sounds crazy, but if he had the internet he could survive jail forever. robert having a constant stream of information to react to, he would go mad. if you gave sam bankman-fried a choice, this is quite serious, of living in a $39 million penthouse in the bahamas without the internet or the metropolitan detention center in brooklyn with the internet, there's no question in my mind he'd take the jail. >> michael lewis has never before written something that dove tails so dramatically with

the sensationalized news, vent. lewis' book comes out tuesday, the same day bankman-fried's trial begins. >> he made a mockery of crypto in the eyes of many. how do you see him? >> everything you said is true. it's more interesting than that. every cause he sought to serve he damaged. every cause he sought to fight, he helped. he was a person who set out in life to maximize the consequences of his actions. never mind the intent and he had exactly the opposite effects of the ones he set out to have. so it looks to me like his life is a cruel joke. [ ticking ] >> michael lewis on why he nearly stopped writing after his daughter's death. >> i didn't know if i wanted to write again. >> a at "60 minututes overtimim. i got t the power r of 3.

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the last minute of "60 minutes" is sponsored by united healthcare. there for what matters. if you have sunday dinner with "60 minutes," next week there will be time for an extra helping. following our usual three stories we'll have an all-new two-part edition. we'll travel to texas where a revolutionary project is building housing with 3d printers. >> look, lesley, that's a little skinny. would you press the plus one real quick. done. you just increased the size incrementally. >> it doesn't end with texas or even planet earth. nasa has plans for 3d printing landing pads, roads and eventually human habitats on the moon. i'm lesley stahl.

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