SBF Retrial Bid Meets Resistance From US Prosecutors

US President Donald Trump reportedly shut the door on a pardon for Sam Bankman-Fried back in January. That left the convicted FTX founder, a.k.a. SBF, with two paths out of a 25-year prison sentence — an appeal already working its way through federal court, and a motion for a new trial filed last month. Federal prosecutors just moved to close the second one.

Witnesses Were No Secret, Government Says

On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that the US Justice Department urged a federal judge to reject Bankman-Fried’s request for a retrial, arguing that the defense hasn’t come close to clearing the legal bar required to get one.

At the center of the fight is testimony from two former FTX executives — Ryan Salame and Daniel Chapsky — whom the defense says could have weakened the government’s case against Bankman-Fried at trial.

Prosecutors aren’t buying it. Both men were known to the defense long before the 2023 trial began, according to court documents cited by Bloomberg.

That matters because a defendant seeking a new trial on the basis of fresh witness testimony must show the evidence was genuinely unknown and unavailable at the time of the original proceedings. If the defense had access to those witnesses before, the argument falls apart under the law.

SBF filed the retrial motion in February, claiming that what Salame and Chapsky could say now would undercut the government’s account of FTX’s financial state before the exchange collapsed in late 2022.

Judge Lewis Kaplan had ordered prosecutors to respond to the motion by March 11. They did — and their answer was a flat no.

A Conviction Built On Fraud And Betrayal

A jury found SBF guilty in November 2023 on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. The charges stemmed from the misuse of customer funds at FTX and its affiliated trading firm, Alameda Research.

The implosion of FTX wiped out billions of dollars belonging to customers around the world and sent shockwaves through the crypto industry.

While Bankman-Fried pursues legal relief through the courts, his public comments have drawn scrutiny of a different kind.

Reports indicate he praised Trump’s position on crypto in social media posts on February 1, which sparked speculation that he was angling for political intervention. Trump said he had no plans to pardon him, according to reports.

Several of Bankman-Fried’s closest associates took plea deals and testified against him. Their accounts painted a picture of a company where customer money was quietly funneled to Alameda and used for investments, loans, and political donations — all without depositors’ knowledge.

The judge sentenced Bankman-Fried to 25 years behind bars following his conviction.

Featured image from Getty Images, chart from TradingView