Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) announced on X that he has filed a motion for a new trial, alleging that the Department of Justice under President Joe Biden threatened multiple witnesses into staying silent or altering their testimonies. The motion, submitted on February 10 under Rule 33 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, includes a sworn declaration from Daniel Chapsky, a former FTX insider who never testified at the original trial.
What Chapsky Would Have Said: FTX Was Solvent
According to the filing, Chapsky was prepared to testify that FTX was solvent during its November 2022 liquidity crisis and that customers could have been fully repaid. He also claimed that Alameda Research's account on FTX held a net positive balance in the billions throughout 2022. The motion further alleges that FTX's bankruptcy estate deliberately manipulated financial data to support the prosecution's case, and that the government "fundamentally misrepresented" what the negative balances in the [email protected] ledger actually meant.
SBF also named two other witnesses he says were silenced: Ryan Salame and Nishad Singh. Singh's early statements to prosecutors allegedly shifted under pressure, while Salame never took the stand at all. SBF's legal team argues that the DOJ used threats to block favorable testimony from both.
Seeking Recusal of Judge Kaplan
SBF is also demanding that Judge Lewis Kaplan recuse himself from ruling on the motion. The filing points to what SBF calls a "pattern of prejudging defendants", citing himself, Salame, and President Donald Trump as examples. SBF claims Kaplan cannot impartially evaluate the new evidence.
Mixed Reactions Online
Reactions on X were split. Many dismissed the motion as a desperate act given the billions lost by FTX users. Others, however, described the Chapsky evidence as "eye-opening" and questioned the overall fairness of the trial. SBF is currently serving a 25-year sentence for seven federal fraud charges tied to FTX's $8 billion collapse. This filing follows a week of public posts in which SBF blamed lawyers for forcing the bankruptcy and alleged prosecutors hid exculpatory evidence.