Sam Bankman-Fried asks for a new trial in an appeal to the 2nd Circuit US Court of Appeals and directly attacks US District Judge Lewis Kaplan for alleged bias
and never changed his mind— was Michael Lewis. Jacob Shamsian / @jayshams : truly I don't really understand why advice-of-counsel was excluded. because the lawyers were fooled by SBF? seems like a q for the jury, no? [image] Jacob Shamsian / @jayshams : It does seem like SBF's lawyers are conveniently skipping over what happened to crypto prices after November 2022.... [image] Jacob Shamsian / @jayshams : As expected, SBF's lawyers say the trial judge should have allowed more evidence about victim losses, that he screwed up the parameters of his testimony, and that he should have been able to use an advice-of-counsel defense. They ask for a new judge. [image] Leo Schwartz / @leomschwartz : Sam Bankman-Fried just filed his appeal. “Fair trial principles were swept away in a ‘Sentence first-verdict afterwards’ tsunami, as everyone rushed to judgment following FTX's collapse. Sam Bankman-Fried was never presumed innocent.” [image] Jacob Shamsian / @jayshams : the idea that the US Attorney's office in SDNY outsourced its investigation into Sullivan & Cromwell and then violated its Brady obligations by not getting all the S&C material to the defense — fascinating. I wanna read a Matt Levine column about that. Forums: r/Buttcoin : Sam Bankman-Fried seeks new trial because the judge made fun of him
Context & Ripple Effects
The appeal builds on a trial record in which Bankman-Fried testified he understood only parts of his companies’ financial condition and was surprised by FTX’s balance-sheet shortfall, as covered in his account of the companies’ financial state. It shifts the dispute from the collapse itself to whether the trial’s evidentiary rules and judicial conduct permitted a fair defense.
The case had already been marked by unusually restrictive pretrial proceedings, including the revocation of Bankman-Fried’s bail over alleged witness tampering. That history makes the appeal’s request for a new judge consequential: it challenges both specific trial rulings and the court’s handling of the defendant.
First-order effects
- The Second Circuit must assess claims that the trial court improperly limited an advice-of-counsel defense, loss evidence, and Bankman-Fried’s testimony; the appeal itself does not alter the conviction or sentence.
- Bankman-Fried’s legal team puts Judge Kaplan’s alleged bias and the prosecution’s disclosure obligations directly at issue while seeking a new trial and, potentially, reassignment.
Second-order effects
- The appeal gives prosecutors and defense counsel a focused record on how far courts may limit evidence tied to a defendant’s reliance on lawyers and to alleged victim losses in complex fraud cases.
- For FTX stakeholders, the filing prolongs legal uncertainty around the criminal case, even as the underlying dispute remains centered on trial procedure rather than a new account of the exchange’s collapse.
Third-order effects
- If appellate courts clarify these evidentiary boundaries, complex financial-fraud trials may see more explicit records on counsel reliance, disclosure disputes, and the relevance of customer-loss evidence.
- The case remains part of crypto’s legitimacy test: post-collapse accountability increasingly depends on conventional court processes rather than the sector’s own narratives, though an appeal alone does not establish a broader legal shift.
The trend: The FTX litigation is one data point in crypto’s legitimacy gap, where the sector’s biggest failures are being tested through durable fraud, disclosure, and due-process institutions.