Sam Bankman Fried Urges for Weekly Jail Release to Prepare for Defense Case

A week after the Department of Justice revoked the bail of disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, he’s now asking to be out five days a week for working on his defense case with his lawyers.

In a Friday letter to US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, lawyers representing SBF said that their client wasn’t able to properly review the huge document pileup in the case by staying in the lock-up at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. SBF’s lawyer Christian Everdell wrote:

“Just last week the government produced three-quarters of a million pages of Slack communications, which were supposed to be produced months ago, that Mr. Bankman-Fried will have no hope of reviewing under this schedule”.

Everdell stated that enabling Bankman-Fried to meet with his legal team and utilize an internet-enabled laptop while at the courthouse would expedite the process. As per the lawyer, this is crucial considering his fraud trial is slated to commence in October.

SBF, who maintains his innocence, faces charges of orchestrating an extensive fraud scheme that granted him unauthorized access to billions of dollars from FTX customer funds for personal purposes.

Prosecutors Find A Way Out for Sam Bankman Fried

Later on Friday, prosecutors expressed dissatisfaction in a letter to the judge, adding that Bankman-Fried hasn’t provided all the necessary information pertaining to his planned defense.

Prosecutors contended that unless Bankman-Fried promptly furnishes details regarding the advice he received and its source, he should not be permitted to introduce this defense during the trial.

The prosecutors said they can put information on hard drives for Bankman-Fried. He can use these hard drives on computers at MDC, a place where people wait for their trials. But they can’t put all the information on a laptop. At first, the prosecutors thought about moving Bankman-Fried to a smaller place upstate. There, he could use a laptop with the internet. But the people in charge of the prison didn’t like that idea and said no.

It would be interesting to see whether the Judge agrees to SBF’s demands before his fraud trial commences.