SBF, who is serving his sentence in prison, filed a 35-page motion for self-defense through his mother, angrily accusing the prosecution of orchestrating an "unfair trial" through threatening witnesses, concealing financial truths, and political targeting, and demanding a retrial.
Written by: Sanqing, Foresight News
On February 10, according to the Inner City Press , Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder of FTX, who is currently serving time at Terminal Island Jail in California, is actively seeking a retrial. His mother, Stanford Law Professor Barbara H. Fried, has formally filed a motion for a pro se (self-defense) retrial on his behalf with the court. This 35-page document cites Federal Rule 33 of Criminal Procedure and newly discovered evidence, strongly demanding the overturning of his 2023 fraud conviction and his 2024 25-year prison sentence.
The motion's key arguments include: the failure of key witnesses (such as former Alameda Research co-CEO Ryan Salame and former FTX.US executive Daniel Chapsky) to testify, resulting in serious flaws in the trial; the prosecutor's alleged concealment of evidence; and the fact that the entire process was influenced by political factors, with the SBF implicitly suggesting it was a victim of "targeted attacks" by the Biden administration.
The evidence and arguments submitted by SBF this time are not intended to directly prove its "innocence," but rather to adopt a legal strategy of questioning the loopholes in the judicial trial process.
Core Allegation 1: "Customized" Witnesses and Judicial Hijacking
The motion alleges that the prosecution used threats and inducements to turn its inner circle against its own interests and to silence witnesses who could be favorable to it.
For example, 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 that prosecutors threatened to prosecute Salame's partner, Michelle Bond, in an effort to prevent Salame from testifying to clear SBF's name.
Regarding Nishad Singh, the former engineering manager who testified against SBF, the motion disclosed that during a pre-trial interview, when Singh's initial statements did not meet the prosecution's expectations, the prosecutor angrily "slammed the table" and denounced Singh's memory as "unreliable."
The SBF argues that this coercive intimidation led Singh to subsequently change his testimony. The motion formally requests the court to order the prosecution to hand over relevant interview notes to prove that the prosecution concealed this coercive process.
Second core allegation: The disappearing "debt" and the mystery of fiat@ftx.com
SBF has submitted an affidavit from Daniel Chapsky, former head of data science at FTX, refuting the misappropriation allegations from a data perspective.
The motion states that prosecutors had cited the large negative balance in the fiat@ftx.com account as irrefutable evidence that SBF had misappropriated client funds. However, Chapsky countered in a statement that the prosecution's explanation was a "fundamental misrepresentation."
He pointed out that the negative balance in the account corresponded to cash and assets held by Alameda off-chain. The prosecution only showed the jury the negative "debit" balance, deliberately ignoring the corresponding "credit" assets, thus creating the illusion of a deficit of billions of dollars out of thin air.
Chapsky's data analysis further revealed that, if correctly calculated for most of 2022, Alameda's accounts on FTX actually maintained a positive balance of approximately $2 billion. Prosecutors and expert witness Peter Easton deliberately misled the jury by only presenting certain specific negative-balance sub-accounts.
The third core allegation: the bankruptcy law firm S&C's "asset erasure tactics".
The SBF also targeted Sullivan & Cromwell (S&C), the law firm responsible for FTX's bankruptcy reorganization. It accused S&C of artificially creating an "insolvency" situation to align with the prosecution's conviction logic and to earn exorbitant legal fees.
The motion states that FTX had a venture capital portfolio worth up to $8.4 billion at the time of its bankruptcy (including an investment in Anthropic, the AI development company for Claude). However, in the early stages of the bankruptcy proceedings, the S&C and prosecutors artificially recorded these less liquid but highly valuable assets as having zero or very low value in order to create a clear funding gap.
SBF emphasized that the fact that the bankruptcy team ultimately confirmed that customers would receive cash payouts of 119% to 143% proves in itself the truth of his claim during the trial that "FTX is solvent and the money is not lost".
Fourth core allegation: Political targeting and judicial bias
Finally, SBF played the political and procedural cards. He implied that he was a victim of the Biden administration's "political war." As a former major Democratic donor, his swift disassociation and heavy sentence after the incident were intended to quell public anger.
Furthermore, given that presiding judge Lewis A. Kaplan had repeatedly rejected the defense's evidence regarding FTX's solvency during previous hearings, the SBF not only requested a retrial in its motion but also explicitly requested Judge Kaplan's recusal, arguing that the judge had demonstrated extreme bias and was no longer capable of making a fair ruling on the case.
Is this breakout battle destined to be a desperate struggle like that of a cornered beast?
Rule 33 requires that the evidence be "newly discovered" after the trial and could not be obtained by the defense through "due diligence" during the trial. The judge is likely to rule that Salame and Chapsky were known potential witnesses during the trial, and that the defense's failure to summon them was a strategic choice or objective difficulty, rather than "new evidence."
Furthermore, FTX's high payout ratio (even exceeding 100%) does not prove that SBF did not misappropriate client funds at the time. As long as client funds are used without authorization (regardless of the purpose), a crime is immediately established. Whether the assets subsequently appreciate is generally considered irrelevant in legal conviction, and may only affect sentencing.
Regarding allegations of coercion, unless there is conclusive audio or written evidence proving that the prosecution directly coerced the defendant (such as a specific recording of "slamming the table"), judges generally tend to accept the prosecution's explanation of procedural compliance.
Furthermore, requesting a senior federal judge to recuse themselves due to "bias" is rarely successful in judicial practice unless there is extremely clear evidence of a conflict of interest. Otherwise, such an accusation may further anger the judicial system and be seen as contempt for the court.
* The original motion document can be viewed here .
