Sam Bankman-Fried has filed a motion in federal court in the Southern District of New York seeking a new trial in the FTX fraud case and asking for Judge Lewis Kaplan to step aside. Inner City Press reported that the filing appeared on February 10, 2026. Bankman-Fried is serving a 25-year sentence after being convicted in November 2023 on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy.
Rule 33 motion targets trial process
The request relies on Rule 33 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which permits a new trial if justice requires it. Bankman-Fried submitted the motion pro se from prison, with a legal memorandum and declaration included in the filing package. A cover letter attached to the motion is dated February 5, 2026. In the filing, he argues that prosecutors withheld information that damaged the defense and violated his due process rights.
The original criminal case grew out of the collapse of FTX. Prosecutors said Bankman-Fried defrauded customers, lenders, and investors, and described the matter as one of the largest financial fraud cases in recent memory. The new motion shifts the fight toward how the trial was handled, rather than focusing only on the verdict itself.
Retrial bid moves separately from appeal
The retrial effort is running on a separate track from his appeal before the Second Circuit. That appellate case is listed as 24-961, and lawyers argued it in November 2025, challenging evidentiary rulings and the fairness of the trial. One process is now aimed at winning a new trial in district court, while the other continues to contest the original proceedings in the appeals court.
Because Bankman-Fried is incarcerated, the retrial materials were submitted by his mother, Barbara H. Fried, who said her son authorized the filing. Fried is an emerita professor at Stanford Law School. The submission also includes a declaration from Daniel Chapsky, the former head of data science at FTX.US, who had previously backed Bankman-Fried during the 2024 sentencing proceedings.
Pardon attention returns as bankruptcy claims resurface
The filing also revived attention around Bankman-Fried’s reported efforts to obtain a pardon from President Donald Trump. According to the report, Trump recently said he has no plans to pardon him. That comment came after several crypto-related pardons in 2025, including the October 2025 pardon of Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, and earlier pardons granted to former BitMEX executives Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, Samuel Reed, and Gregory Dwyer.
Separately, posts from Bankman-Fried’s X account claimed that FTX never filed for bankruptcy on its own and said lawyers took control and filed within four hours. He also referred to a sworn filing from January 2023 and disputed the inclusion of FTX U.S. in the bankruptcy process. Those statements do not alter the criminal judgment already entered against him, but they show that his challenge to the FTX collapse narrative is still active on multiple fronts.