Original Title: "Former Giant Unwilling to Accept Fate, SBF Files 35-Page Motion in Prison Accusing 'Darkness' of Trial"

Original Author: Sanqing, Foresight News

On February 10, according to Inner City Press, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder of FTX, who is serving his sentence at Terminal Island prison in California, is actively seeking to overturn his conviction. A pro se motion for reconsideration, submitted 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 overturning of his 2023 fraud conviction and the 25-year prison sentence imposed in 2024.

The motion argues key points including: the absence of key witnesses (such as former Alameda Research co-CEO Ryan Salame and former FTX.US executive Daniel Chapsky) resulted in serious flaws in the trial; prosecutors allegedly concealed evidence; and the entire process was influenced by political factors, with SBF subtly expressing that he is a victim of a "targeted attack" by the Biden administration.

The evidence and arguments submitted by SBF are not aimed at directly proving his "innocence," but rather adopt a legal strategy questioning the flaws in the judicial trial process.

Core Allegation 1: "Customized" Witnesses and Judicial Kidnapping

The motion accuses the prosecution of threatening and inducing key insiders, silencing witnesses favorable to SBF.

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, revealing that the prosecution threatened to prosecute Salame's partner, Michelle Bond, to prevent Salame from testifying to SBF's innocence.

Regarding the testimony of SBF's former engineering director Nishad Singh, the motion discloses that during pre-trial interviews, when Singh's initial statements did not align with the prosecution's expectations, the prosecutors angrily "slammed the table," berating Singh's memory as "unreliable."

SBF believes that it was this high-pressure intimidation that forced Singh to subsequently change his testimony. The motion formally requests the court to order the prosecution to produce relevant interview notes to prove that the prosecution concealed this coercive process.

Core Allegation 2: The Disappearing "Liabilities" and the Mystery of fiat@ftx.com

SBF submitted a sworn statement from former FTX data science director Daniel Chapsky, refuting the misappropriation allegations from a data perspective.

The motion points out that the prosecution had used the massive negative balance in the fiat@ftx.com account as irrefutable evidence of SBF misappropriating customer funds. However, Chapsky refuted in his statement that the prosecution's explanation was a "fundamental misrepresentation."

He noted that the negative balance in that account corresponded to cash and assets held off-chain by Alameda. The prosecution only presented the negative "debit" figures to the jury while deliberately ignoring the corresponding "credit" assets, thus creating a fictitious appearance of a multi-billion dollar shortfall.

Chapsky's data analysis further shows that if properly accounted for during most of 2022, Alameda's account on FTX actually maintained a positive balance of about $2 billion. The prosecution and expert witness Peter Easton deliberately only showcased certain specific negative balance sub-accounts, misleading the jury.

Core Allegation 3: The "Asset Erasure" of Bankruptcy Firm S&C

SBF also pointed the finger at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell (S&C), responsible for FTX's bankruptcy restructuring. He accused S&C of artificially creating a "liabilities exceed assets" scenario 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 bankruptcy (including investments in Claude AI developer Anthropic). However, in the early stages of bankruptcy, S&C and the prosecution artificially recorded these slightly less liquid but highly valuable assets as zero or very low value to substantiate the funding gap.

SBF emphasized that the bankruptcy team ultimately confirmed that customers would receive cash payouts of 119% to 143%, which itself proves that his claim during the trial that "FTX was solvent, and money was not lost" is true.

Core Allegation 4: Political Targeting and Judicial Bias

Finally, SBF played the political and procedural cards. He hinted 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 re-sentenced after the incident to quell public outrage.

Additionally, given that presiding Judge Lewis A. Kaplan had repeatedly dismissed the defense's evidence regarding "FTX's solvency" in previous hearings, SBF's motion not only requests a retrial but also explicitly calls for Judge Kaplan to recuse himself, arguing that the judge has shown extreme bias and can no longer fairly adjudicate this case.

Is This Breakout Battle Destined to Be a Struggle of a Cornered Beast?

Rule 33 motions require that evidence must be "newly discovered" after the 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 strategic choice or objective difficulty, rather than "new evidence."

Moreover, the high payout rate of FTX (even exceeding 100%) does not disprove that SBF did not misappropriate customer funds at that time. As long as customer funds were used without authorization (regardless of purpose), the crime is immediately established, and whether subsequent assets appreciate is generally considered irrelevant to legal conviction, only potentially affecting sentencing.

Regarding the coercion allegations, unless there is solid audio or written evidence proving direct coercion by the prosecution (such as a specific recording of "slamming the table"), judges typically tend to accept the prosecution's compliance explanations.

Additionally, requesting a senior federal judge to recuse themselves due to "bias" rarely succeeds in judicial practice, unless there is extremely clear evidence of a conflict of interest. Otherwise, such accusations may further anger the judicial system and be viewed as contempt of court.

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