Last time I wrote about Sam Bankman Fried’s ongoing effort to overturn his conviction for fraud and conspiracy, I wrote, “Anyone willing to keep trying—or to pay lawyers to keep trying for them—can always do more legal busywork in pursuit of a favorable decision, all the way up to the Supreme Court if they want.”
And he has been doing that. Not just by paying lawyers to do it for him, either. He wrote his latest filings himself, with the help of his lawyer parents, according to Bloomberg, and they were rejected by Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw the trial that led to his conviction. Bloomberg quotes the judge as saying SBF’s self-authored motion, “appears to be one part of a plan to rescue his reputation that Bankman-Fried hatched and even committed to writing after FTX declared bankruptcy but before he was indicted.”
That “plan” the judge seems to be talking about was a piece of evidence from 2022, released by the prosecution in 2024. When he wrote it, his business was in crisis, but he wasn’t yet indicted, Bankman-Fried created a document with the heading “these are all random probably bad ideas that aren’t vetted; CONFIDENTIAL.” They included appearing on Tucker Carlson’s TV show to come out as anti-woke and a Republican.
That plan also included an idea that was part of his latest filing: to claim the FTX chapter 11 filing actually ruined some hidden liquidity that could have made his victims whole. In a filing last month, the prosecution called that claim “factually wrong, legally irrelevant, and deeply misleading.”
To refresh your memory, SBF was convicted of seven charges related to wire fraud and conspiracy. The claims of the prosecution were that billions of dollars were transferred from the relative safety of FTX customers’ accounts to the more volatile Alameda Research, an FTX-related hedge fund. When crypto winter hit Alameda research, the value of much of those FTX investors’ crypto was wiped out—unless there was some hidden source of money.
Bankman-Fried claimed in his latest filing that there were two newly discovered witnesses whose testimony would have backed up the secret liquidity narrative: former FTX executives Ryan Salame (who was also convicted) and Daniel Chapsky.
“The proffered witnesses were fully known to the defense before trial, and are therefore not ‘newly discovered,’” the prosecution wrote last month.
Apparently, SBF had actually said something to the effect of never mind before this ruling from Kaplan. Bloomberg says this ruling “came even after Bankman-Fried had asked to withdraw his request, claiming the judge wouldn’t be fair in deciding it.” But Kaplan also rejected that attempted withdrawal.
