Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX founder who pleaded not guilty to most of the charges against him, will have five and a half hours with his attorneys on Tuesday, minus any time spent being arraigned. This comes after prosecutors said they would have to drop the campaign finance-specific charge due to treaty obligations with the Bahamas. Bankman-Fried was recently sent to jail after a federal judge ruled he’d violated his bond conditions twice in attempting to manipulate or intimidate witnesses against him.
Judge Lewis Kaplan, the Southern District of New York jurist overseeing the case, allowed Bankman-Fried to meet with his attorneys in the U.S. Marshals Service’ attorney room from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET on Tuesday. He also limited the number of laptops and WiFi-enabled devices to one apiece rather than the two each requested. Judge Kaplan did set a Wednesday deadline for the defense to provide information about Bankman-Fried’s proposed advice-of-counsel defense.
The Government is left to guess whether it is the defendant’s assertion that he received legal advice relating to his deletion of Slack and Signal messages, the DOJ said in a Friday filing.
Bankman-Fried’s attorneys had asked that he be allowed to access two internet-enabled laptops and two mobile WiFi devices from conference rooms within the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the courthouse every weekday, and be able to work on his defense for the entire day on Aug. 22, 2023.