Original Title: "Former Giant Reluctantly Accepts Fate, SBF's 35-Page Motion in Prison Accuses Trial of 'Darkness'"
Original Author: Sanqing, Foresight News
On February 10, according to Inner City Press, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), who is serving time in California's Terminal Island prison, is actively seeking to overturn his conviction. A pro se motion for reconsideration, submitted on his behalf by his mother, Stanford law professor Barbara H. Fried, has been officially filed with the court. This 35-page document cites Federal Criminal Procedure Rule 33 and newly discovered evidence, strongly demanding the reversal of his 2023 fraud conviction and the 25-year prison sentence handed down in 2024.
Key arguments in the motion include: crucial witnesses (such as former Alameda Research Co-CEO Ryan Salame and former FTX.US executive Daniel Chapsky) did not testify, resulting in serious trial flaws; prosecutors allegedly concealed evidence; and the entire process was influenced by political factors, with SBF subtly expressing that he was a victim of the Biden administration's "targeted attack".
The evidence and arguments submitted by SBF are not aimed at directly proving his "innocence," but rather adopt a legal strategy that questions the flaws in the judicial process.
Core Allegation One: Witnesses 'Tailored' and Judicial Kidnapping
The motion accuses the prosecution of coercing and enticing key insiders, effectively silencing favorable witnesses.
For instance, 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 the prosecution threatened to prosecute Salame's partner Michelle Bond to prevent Salame from testifying to SBF's innocence.
Regarding former engineering director Nishad Singh’s testimony against SBF, the motion discloses that during pretrial interviews, when Singh's initial statements did not align with the prosecution's expectations, prosecutors angrily "slammed the table" and criticized Singh's memory as "untrustworthy".
SBF contends that this high-pressure intimidation led Singh to subsequently feel compelled to change his testimony. The motion formally requests the court to order the prosecution to turn over pertinent interview notes to demonstrate that the prosecution concealed this coercion process.
Core Allegation Two: The Disappearing 'Liabilities' and the Mystery of fiat@ftx.com
SBF submitted an affidavit from former FTX data science director Daniel Chapsky, refuting the embezzlement allegations from a data perspective.
The motion points out that the prosecution used a huge negative balance in the fiat@ftx.com account as ironclad evidence of SBF embezzling customer funds. However, Chapsky rebutted in his statement that the prosecution's explanation is a "fundamental misstatement".
He pointed out that the negative balance in the account corresponds to cash and assets held off-chain by Alameda. The prosecution only showed the jury the negative numbers in the "debits," intentionally ignoring the corresponding assets in the "credits," thus fabricating the illusion of a multi-billion dollar shortfall out of thin air.
Chapsky's data analysis further indicates that if correctly accounted for throughout much 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 presented certain specific negative sub-accounts, misleading the jury.
Core Allegation Three: The 'Asset Erasure' of Bankruptcy Law Firm S&C
SBF has also turned his focus on Sullivan & Cromwell (S&C), the law firm responsible for FTX's bankruptcy restructuring. He accuses S&C of artificially creating a 'solvency crisis' in order to align with the prosecution's logic for conviction and to earn exorbitant legal fees.
The motion points out that FTX had a venture portfolio valued at up to $8.4 billion at the time of bankruptcy (including investments in Claude AI developer Anthropic). However, at the outset of the bankruptcy, S&C and the prosecution artificially marked these illiquid but highly valuable assets as zero or extremely low value in order to substantiate the funding gap.
SBF emphasizes that the bankruptcy team ultimately confirmed that customers would receive 119% to 143% cash payouts, which itself proves that his claim during the trial that "FTX is solvent, and money was not lost" is true.
Core Allegation Four: Political Targeting and Judicial Bias
Finally, SBF plays the political and procedural cards. He hints that he is a victim of the Biden administration's "political war". As a former major donor to the Democratic Party, he was quickly cut off and retried after his downfall to quell public outrage.
Additionally, given that presiding judge Lewis A. Kaplan has repeatedly rejected defense evidence regarding "FTX being solvent" in previous hearings, SBF's motion not only requests a reconsideration but explicitly calls for Judge Kaplan's recusal, arguing that the judge has exhibited extreme bias and can no longer render an impartial ruling in this case.
Is This Struggle a Cornered Beast's Fight?
The Rule 33 motion requires that evidence must be "newly discovered" post-trial, and that the defense could not have obtained it through "due diligence" during the trial. The judge is likely to rule that Salame and Chapsky were known potential witnesses during the trial, and the defense's failure to summon them was a tactical choice or objective difficulty, rather than "new evidence".
Moreover, FTX's high payout rate (even exceeding 100%) does not negate SBF's alleged misappropriation of customer funds at that time. As long as customer funds were used without authorization (regardless of purpose), the crime is immediately established; whether subsequent assets appreciate is usually deemed irrelevant in legal conviction, only potentially affecting sentencing.
Regarding the coercion allegations, unless there is conclusive audio or written evidence proving the prosecution directly coerced (such as specific recordings of "slamming the table"), judges usually tend to credit the prosecution's compliance statements.
Additionally, it is extremely rare for a senior federal judge to recuse themselves due to "bias" in judicial practice, unless there is extremely clear evidence of a conflict of interest. Otherwise, such allegations could even further infuriate the judicial system and be seen as contempt of court.
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