By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sam Bankman-Fried has appealed a call to jail him forward of his Oct. 3 trial over the collapse of his FTX cryptocurrency change, arguing he was being punished for exercising his First Modification proper to free speech.
U.S. District Choose Lewis Kaplan had on Aug. 11 revoked bail for the 31-year-old former billionaire after discovering possible trigger to imagine he tampered with witnesses.
That got here after he shared with a New York Instances reporter private writings belonging to his former colleague and romantic accomplice, Caroline Ellison, from earlier than FTX’s November 2022 collapse.
Ellison is considered one of three former members of Bankman-Fried’s internal circle anticipated to testify towards him after pleading responsible to fraud.
In a movement for Bankman-Fried to be launched from jail filed late on Friday evening with the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court docket of Appeals, his attorneys wrote that their shopper shared Ellison’s writings with the reporter to defend his popularity, to not intimidate her.
“It’s unclear how a cooperating witness who has promised to testify towards a defendant could possibly be meaningfully threatened by nothing however their very own statements being printed by a good newspaper,” Bankman-Fried’s attorneys wrote.
Prosecutors have accused Bankman-Fried of stealing billions of {dollars} in buyer funds to plug losses at Alameda Analysis, a crypto-focused hedge fund he additionally owned and the place Ellison was chief govt.
He has pleaded not responsible.
His attorneys have mentioned locking him up at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Middle, lengthy maligned by critics for its circumstances, interfered together with his constitutional proper to organize for trial.
At an Aug. 22 courtroom listening to, Bankman-Fried’s attorneys objected to the jail’s failure to supply him with Adderall for his consideration deficit hyperactivity dysfunction, or serve him vegan meals, inflicting him to subsist on bread, water, and peanut butter.
His attorneys additionally mentioned the jail was not permitting Bankman-Fried sufficient pc time to evaluation proof and put together his protection.
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In her writings, Ellison described feeling “sad and overwhelmed” along with her job and “harm/rejected” from her break-up with Bankman-Fried.
Prosecutors mentioned Bankman-Fried shared Ellison’s writings to harass her, and to dissuade others from testifying in the event that they thought he would make them look unhealthy within the press.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Enhancing by Daniel Wallis and Nick Zieminski)