Bankman-Fried Drops Request for New Trial Amid Fairness Concerns

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has formally withdrawn his motion for a retrial, citing doubts about receiving a fair hearing. In a letter to the presiding judge, Bankman-Fried expressed his intention to potentially renew the motion after the resolution of his direct appeal and a related request for the case to be reassigned. The initial motion for a new trial was submitted by his mother, Barbara Fried, who claimed that newly discovered evidence warranted a retrial. Bankman-Fried, currently serving a 25-year sentence for fraud and conspiracy convictions related to FTX's collapse in 2022, revealed that he had primarily drafted the motion himself while in detention, with limited assistance from his lawyers and family members. Although he sought input from his lawyers and parents, Bankman-Fried maintained that he was the primary author of the letter to the judge. His appeal is currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where his attorney, Alexandra Shapiro, argued during oral arguments in November that the trial was fundamentally unfair due to restrictions on the evidence Bankman-Fried could present to the jury.