Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the collapsed FTX exchange, is currently detained at the Manhattan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York. In response to a federal judge’s order for a report on the conditions Bankman-Fried faces while detained, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a letter Tuesday that the jailed executive has access to a laptop seven days a week and three hard drives with defense material at all times.
Bankman-Fried’s defense team had previously argued that he needed…out of jail to work on his defense, citing poor internet access and battery life as limiting factors. However, the DOJ said in their letter that Bankman-Fried now has access to an air-gapped laptop for 11 hours a day on weekdays and 7.5 hours a day on weekends and holidays. Additionally, the defense team had provided a new battery with approximately 8 hours battery life, and the internet speed over the course of a day ranged from 7.5 megabits per second (mbps) to 34 mbps.
The DOJ said this was sufficient for most internet review activities in its letter. Prosecutors had previously taken issue with the defense team’s characterization of the technology issues, saying they were inconvenient but not debilitating.
Bankman-Fried has been in jail since mid-August after Judge Kaplan revoked his bail, ruling that the FTX founder had engaged in multiple efforts to tamper with witnesses. His defense team has filed an appeal of the bail revocation, but argued that his detention was interfering with his Sixth Amendment right to work on his own defense.