The US Department of Justice has accused FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried of more than just making a fair comment in sharing the diary of former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison with the New York Times. In a filing late Thursday, the Justice Department said Bankman-Fried’s conduct, which included his use of a virtual private network to watch the Super Bowl and his reaching out to FTX.US General Counsel Ryne Miller, repeatedly…seeks to corruptly influence witnesses.
In response to the first filing from the Justice Department, Bankman-Fried’s attorneys said the government had been mischaracterizing the FTX founder’s actions. However, the Justice Department suggested that the defense team was itself mischaracterizing these actions. According to the Justice Department, Bankman-Fried had originally set up groups on the Signal messaging app and set them to delete messages after a week. Prosecutors also claimed that Bankman-Fried had helped create a media atmosphere that amplified Ellison’s prominence ahead of her serving as a witness.
What is clear — regardless of whether the defendant was the first source for stories regarding Ellison — is that the defendant, rather than deny his guilt as he correctly now says it is his right to do, shared materials with the press obviously designed to intimidate, harass, and embarrass someone he knows is slated to testify against him, and to provoke an emotional response in potential jurors and color a potential juror’s view of that witness, the filing said.
Kenneth White, a former federal prosecutor and a founding partner at Brown White & Osborn, previously told journalists that the Justice Department would have to convince the judge that Bankman-Fried is a danger to the community. Harassing or intimidating a witness would fall under a subset of that concern.