Bankman-Fried withdraws new trial motion, cites unfair hearing

Sam Bankman-Fried told U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan he is withdrawing his Rule 33 motion for a new trial in a letter filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. He asked that the withdrawal be entered without prejudice so he may renew the motion after his direct appeal and any related reassignment are resolved.

In the letter, Bankman-Fried wrote that he had spent time responding to Judge Kaplan’s earlier questions about who drafted the motion rather than preparing an answer to prosecutors’ opposition.

As I have had to focus on responding to these questions rather than drafting a response to the prosecution’s opposition, and because I do not believe I will get a fair hearing on this topic in front of you, I am now requesting to withdraw the Rule 33 motion.

Bankman-Fried said he conceived and drafted versions of the Rule 33 filing while detained in Brooklyn and conducted much of the legal research there. He stated he did not consult his attorney on the drafts, but shared them with his parents, who provided editorial and organizational suggestions and assisted with printing. He noted that an earlier New York attorney who was retained to handle the motion “had no significant input into the ultimate motion.”

The Rule 33 filing requests a new trial. In March, Bankman-Fried’s mother filed a pro se new-trial motion on his behalf. Bankman-Fried also has a pending direct appeal, filed in November, that remains unresolved.

A jury convicted Bankman-Fried in November 2023 on seven criminal counts related to defrauding customers, lenders and investors of the collapsed crypto exchange FTX and its sister hedge fund Alameda Research. He was later sentenced to 25 years in prison. Prosecutors have described the fraud allegations as among the largest in recent years and compared aspects of the case to Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

The letter also asked that any future consideration of the Rule 33 motion follow resolution of a related reassignment request, a question over whether Judge Kaplan should remain on further litigation tied to the case.

With the withdrawal, one path to challenge the conviction is paused while the appellate process and the reassignment request move forward. The underlying litigation continues to address the collapse of FTX, the role of Alameda Research and how customer funds were handled at the exchange.