Written by: Sanqing, Foresight News
Original title: Former Titan Refuses to Accept Fate, SBF Files 35-Page Motion from Prison Alleging "Conspiracy" in Trial
On February 10, according to a report by Inner City Press, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), currently serving his sentence at Terminal Island prison in California, is actively seeking to overturn his conviction. A pro se (self-represented) motion for a new trial, submitted on his behalf by his mother, Stanford Law School Professor Barbara H. Fried, has been formally filed with the court. This 35-page document cites Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure Rule 33 and newly discovered evidence, strongly demanding the reversal of his 2023 fraud conviction and the 25-year prison sentence imposed in 2024.
The motion's key arguments include: the absence of crucial witnesses (such as former Alameda Research co-CEO Ryan Salame and former FTX.US executive Daniel Chapsky) led to serious flaws in the trial; prosecutors allegedly concealed evidence; and the entire process was influenced by political factors, with SBF subtly suggesting he was a victim of "targeted prosecution" by the Biden administration.
The evidence and arguments submitted by SBF this time are not aimed at directly proving his "innocence" but rather adopt a legal strategy questioning the procedural loopholes in the judicial process.
Core Allegation One: "Customized" Witnesses and Judicial Coercion
The motion alleges that the prosecution, through threats and inducements, turned his inner circle against him and "silenced" witnesses favorable to his defense.
For example, the absence of former Alameda Research co-CEO Ryan Salame. The motion cites Salame's public statements after August 2024 (including an interview with Tucker Carlson) as newly discovered evidence, revealing that prosecutors threatened to prosecute Salame's partner, Michelle Bond, to prevent Salame from testifying to SBF's innocence.
Regarding former engineering director Nishad Singh, who testified against SBF, the motion discloses that during pre-trial interviews, when Singh's initial statements did not meet the prosecution's expectations, a prosecutor angrily "slammed the table," reprimanding Singh for his "unreliable" memory.
SBF believes that this high-pressure intimidation forced Singh to subsequently change his testimony. The motion formally requests the court to order the prosecution to hand over the relevant interview notes to prove this coercion was concealed.
Core Allegation Two: The Vanishing "Liabilities" and the Mystery of [email protected]
SBF submitted a sworn declaration from former FTX Head of Data Science Daniel Chapsky, countering the misappropriation allegations from a data perspective.
The motion points out that the prosecution had presented the huge negative balance in the [email protected] account as ironclad evidence of SBF's misappropriation of customer funds. However, Chapsky refutes this in his declaration, calling the prosecution's interpretation a "fundamental misrepresentation."
He stated that the negative balance in this account corresponded to cash and assets held offline by Alameda. The prosecution only showed the "debit" negative numbers to the jury but deliberately omitted the corresponding "credit" assets, thus fabricating a false impression of a multi-billion dollar shortfall.
Chapsky's data analysis further shows that if correctly accounted for during most of 2022, Alameda's account on FTX actually maintained a positive balance of approximately $2 billion. The prosecution and expert witness Peter Easton deliberately only displayed certain specific sub-accounts with negative balances, misleading the jury.
Core Allegation Three: Bankruptcy Law Firm S&C's "Asset Erasure Technique"
SBF also targeted the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell (S&C), responsible for FTX's bankruptcy restructuring. He accuses S&C of artificially creating "insolvency" to align with the prosecution's conviction narrative and to earn exorbitant legal fees.
The motion states that FTX held a venture portfolio valued at up to $8.4 billion at the time of bankruptcy (including investments in Claude AI developer Anthropic). However, in the early stages of bankruptcy, S&C and the prosecution, to solidify the funding gap, artificially recorded these less liquid but highly valuable assets at zero or extremely low values.
SBF emphasizes that the bankruptcy team's eventual confirmation that customers will receive 119% to 143% cash recovery itself proves that his assertion during the trial—"FTX was solvent, the money wasn't lost"—was true.
Core Allegation Four: Political Targeting and Judicial Bias
Finally, SBF played the political and procedural cards. He implied he was a victim of a "political war" by the Biden administration. As a former major Democratic donor, he was quickly distanced from and harshly sentenced after his downfall to quell public anger.
Furthermore, given that presiding Judge Lewis A. Kaplan repeatedly rejected defense evidence regarding "FTX's solvency" during the previous trial, SBF's motion not only demands a new trial but also explicitly requests Judge Kaplan to recuse himself, citing the judge's demonstrated extreme bias and inability to adjudicate the case fairly.
Is This Breakout Attempt Doomed to Be a Last Stand?
A Rule 33 motion requires the evidence to be "newly discovered" after the trial, which the defense could not have obtained through "due diligence" during the trial. The judge will likely rule that Salame and Chapsky were known potential witnesses during the trial, and the defense's failure to call them was a strategic choice or an objective difficulty, not "new evidence."
Moreover, FTX's high recovery rate (even exceeding 100%) does not conversely prove that SBF did not misappropriate customer funds at the time. The crime is established upon the unauthorized use of customer funds (regardless of intent), and subsequent asset appreciation is typically considered irrelevant to legal guilt, potentially affecting only sentencing.
Regarding the coercion allegations, unless there is conclusive audio or written evidence proving direct prosecutorial coercion (such as a specific recording of "table slamming"), judges generally tend to accept the prosecution's explanations of procedural compliance.
Additionally, successfully requesting a senior federal judge to recuse themselves for "bias" is extremely rare in judicial practice, unless there is very clear evidence of a conflict of interest. Otherwise, such accusations might further anger the judicial system and be seen as contempt of court.
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