At a criminal trial hearing on Thursday, Judge Lewis Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York seemed skeptical of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s efforts to dismiss some of the charges he faces. The charges include bank fraud, wire fraud, and campaign finance.
I’d like to congratulate you on an extraordinarily imaginative [defense], the judge told one defense attorney who argued that the U.S. Department of Justice was trying to insert new legal theories into its prosecution.
Mark Cohen, another attorney for Bankman-Fried, argued that the campaign finance charge should be dismissed, or at least severed alongside other charges, on a technical detail. The operative document in extradition is the warrant of surrender, Cohen said. It does not list the campaign finance charge. Bankman-Fried never consented to be extradited on that charge, Cohen contended.
A prosecutor pushed back against this assertion, saying the U.S. had included the charge in its extradition request. The warrant in question was addressed to Bahamian police, and while it may not have included the charge, the Bahamian court itself was aware of it, the prosecutor said. Judge Kaplan seemed unconvinced.
The judge also denied a number of motions made by the defense tied to discovery, including an effort to have the DOJ review FTX documents and materials. Bankman-Fried’s attorneys filed to dismiss most of the charges laid out against him last month, arguing that there were a number of different reasons to grant the motions.
Late Wednesday night, prosecutors agreed to hold off on the additional charges until the Bahamas signed off.