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The United States Attorney’s Office has submitted a confirmation of the denial of bail for former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried, asserting that he might attempt to tamper with witnesses and indicating that no conditions of release would guarantee the safety of those witnesses. Prosecutors addressed various assertions made in his appeal against the bail revocation, labeling it as “meritless.”
In their reply, the prosecutors contended that SBF had been found to have either committed or attempted witness tampering on two occasions, breaching court orders. Therefore, given his ongoing disregard for his pre-trial release conditions, Bankman-Fried was deemed unlikely to comply with any release stipulations.
The initial instance of SBF attempting to reach out to witnesses emerged in January of this year, when the former FTX CEO made contact with the then-General Counsel of FTX.US, who is also a potential trial witness represented by legal counsel.
The second occurrence transpired in July 2023, when a New York Times article revealed private journal messages from Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda and associate of SBF. Counsel for SBF confirmed that the journal had been leaked by the former FTX CEO himself. The prosecutors contacted the District Court to emphasize how SBF had secretly shared private and potentially damaging writings of Ellison to undermine her credibility and possibly sway the jury’s perception in the upcoming trial.
On July 26, during a court conference, prosecutors sought to revoke SBF’s bail request based on his breaches of bail conditions and attempts to influence witnesses. Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan from the District Court for the Southern District of New York revoked SBF’s bail on Aug. 11 after it was determined that he had contacted witnesses in an effort to influence or intimidate them. The former FTX CEO had been released on bail with a $250 million bond since December 2022.
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On Aug. 28, SBF’s legal team filed an appeal against the bail revocation ruling, asserting that the former FTX CEO had the right to discuss Ellison with the press, as it was protected under the First Amendment. However, prosecutors maintained that Judge Kaplan had considered SBF’s First Amendment rights in his ruling. The judge noted in the ruling that “the law is that once communication is undertaken as part of or with the intent to intimidate or influence a witness, it’s a crime, and the First Amendment has nothing to do with it.”
The prosecutors presented two main arguments against SBF’s appeal. First:
“The District Court did not clearly err in finding probable cause to believe Bankman-Fried twice committed attempted witness tampering while on pretrial release.”
Second:
“Judge Kaplan did not clearly err in finding probable cause that Bankman-Fried attempted to tamper with Witness 1.”
The prosecutors also pointed out that the defendants did not contest the ruling regarding SBF’s attempt to contact the former FTX.US counsel, which the judge identified as a clear act of witness tampering.
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