Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of the defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, filed a motion on September 1 requesting that the court deny the prosecutor’s limine request, calling them “unworkable.”
In the memorandum, written by SBF’s attorney Mark Cohen, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) requests are described as “unfounded and overbroad,” among other things.
He argues that most government concerns cannot be adequately addressed now. In addition, the memorandum asserts that the requests “seek to admit irrelevant and prejudicial evidence regarding conduct that is no longer or was never charged, to undermine any potential defense, and to admit broad categories of hearsay and improper evidence.”
The brief then argues that the prosecutor’s requests are “unsupported by law and impractical” and should not be granted.
This memorandum follows multiple recent filings by the Department of Justice requesting court intervention in various aspects of the case. The government filed a motion on August 28 to prevent all SBF expert witnesses from testifying in court.
The Department of Justice argued that all proposed experts and their accompanying disclosures “suffer from a variety of deficiencies” and should, therefore, be excluded from the trial.
The next day, on August 29, the prosecutor filed a second petition calling SBF’s fraud allegation defense in its current state “irrelevant” and requesting additional disclosures to the already planned defense.
In the meantime, SBF’s attorneys have advocated for his temporary release, arguing that the accommodations provided by the authorities are insufficient for him to prepare for his October trial.
In addition, his attorneys are in the process of appealing the court’s August 11 decision to revoke his parole. The defense argued that the defendant’s bond was revoked as “retaliation” for exercising his First Amendment rights.
