Indicted FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried leaves the U.S. Courthouse in Recent York City, July 26, 2023.
Amr Alfiky | Reuters
A Recent York judge will decide on Friday, during a hearing that starts at 2 p.m. ET, whether to send Sam Bankman-Fried to jail.
Federal prosecutors have asked U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to revoke the FTX founder’s bail over alleged witness tampering. If Kaplan sides with the federal government, Bankman-Fried will probably be remanded to custody directly from a court hearing in Manhattan, where he would remain ahead of his criminal trial, due to begin on Oct. 2.
Since his arrest in December, Bankman-Fried had been out on a $250 million bail package which requires him to remain at his parents’ Palo Alto, California, house.
Bankman-Fried’s court appearance on Friday is the most recent in a series of pretrial hearings related to the ex-billionaire’s continued dealings with the press – exchanges which the Justice Department characterizes as a “pattern of witness tampering and evading his bail conditions.”
Kaplan previously issued a direct and stern warning to Bankman-Fried in July over his conversations with the media.
Members of the press, including counsel for The Recent York Times and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, have filed letters objecting to Bankman-Fried’s detention, citing free speech concerns. Defense attorneys have similarly argued that Bankman-Fried was asserting his First Amendment right and didn’t violate any terms of his bail conditions by speaking with journalists.
The invention process can be helping Bankman-Fried’s case.
Lawyers representing the previous FTX chief have argued that if Bankman-Fried is jailed, he wouldn’t have the ability to properly prepare for his trial due to the mountainous amounts of discovery documents only accessible via a pc with web access.
Within the motion requesting Bankman-Fried’s detention, the federal government said that, during the last several months, the defendant had sent greater than 100 emails to the media and had revamped 1,000 phone calls to members of the press. The ultimate straw, according to prosecutors, was Bankman-Fried’s decision to leak private diary entries of his ex-girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, to The Recent York Times.
Ellison, who can be the previous chief executive of Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, has been cooperating with the federal government since December and is predicted to be a star witness for the prosecution. Ellison pleaded guilty to federal charges in December 2022.
“Faced with a series of conditions meant to limit the defendant’s use of the web and the phone, the defendant pivoted to in-person machinations,” the prosecution said of Bankman-Fried, whose revised bail conditions include restricted web access and a ban from smartphone use.
The federal government added that Bankman-Fried had greater than 100 phone calls with one in every of the authors of the Times story before publication, lots of which lasted for roughly 20 minutes.
The prosecution described the trouble by Bankman-Fried – who faces several wire and securities fraud charges related to the alleged multibillion-dollar FTX fraud – as an attempt to discredit Ellison, characterizing it as a “technique of indirect witness intimidation through the press.”
Prosecutors have had to cull charges twice to comply with an extradition agreement signed with the Bahamas – where Bankman-Fried was previously held in custody. The federal government told the judge in a letter that next week it plans to file a latest superseding indictment.