In an upcoming hearing scheduled for Friday at 2 p.m. ET, a New York magistrate will determine the fate of FTX’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried.
The U.S. legal team is urging Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to consider revoking Bankman-Fried’s bail due to accusations of witness interference. If the Judge agrees with the prosecution’s stance, the FTX magnate would be taken into custody immediately following the Manhattan court session, waiting there until his official trial on October 2nd.
Bankman-Fried has been enjoying conditional freedom since his December apprehension, anchored by a staggering $250 million bail, under the stipulation he resides in his family’s Palo Alto home in California.
This week’s court proceeding is a continuation of prior pre-trial sessions focusing on Bankman-Fried’s interactions with the media. These interactions are viewed by the Justice Department as deliberate attempts to influence witnesses and breach his bail agreements.
Previously, in July, Judge Kaplan cautioned Bankman-Fried against his ongoing engagements with journalists.
Various media representatives, including legal voices from The New York Times and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, have expressed their reservations regarding Bankman-Fried’s potential detention, invoking concerns related to freedom of speech. The defense emphasizes that their client’s interactions with the media fall within his First Amendment rights, and they argue that no bail conditions were breached.
A significant volume of discovery documents that can only be accessed online further complicates the case. Bankman-Fried’s legal team asserts that his preparation for the trial would be heavily compromised if he’s incarcerated and deprived of internet access.
According to government sources, Bankman-Fried has been prolific in his media outreach over the recent months, dispatching more than 100 emails to media outlets and engaging in over 1,000 phone dialogues with journalists. The prosecution finds particular fault with Bankman-Fried’s alleged leak of intimate diary entries of his former partner, Caroline Ellison, to the New York Times.
Ellison, previously at the helm of the now-defunct Alameda Research crypto fund initiated by Bankman-Fried, has been collaborating with the authorities since her guilty plea in December 2022.
Prosecutors highlight Bankman-Fried’s strategic shifts to direct interactions when faced with restrictions on internet and phone usage. They also spotlighted his repeated communication with a New York Times journalist leading up to a controversial article, emphasizing that many of these conversations spanned around 20 minutes.
Describing Bankman-Fried’s actions as indirect intimidation tactics through the media, the prosecution alleges he aims to undermine Ellison. The backdrop to all this is the FTX founder’s entanglement in a multitude of charges connected to the FTX scam, amounting to billions.
The prosecution has already revised the charges twice to adhere to an extradition agreement with The Bahamas, where Bankman-Fried was previously detained. They’ve informed the judge that a fresh indictment is in the works for the coming week.
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