Sam Bankman-Fried Backs Off New Trial Request, Keeps Pressure On Judge Removal

Sam Bankman-Fried has told a federal court he does not expect a fair hearing from the judge overseeing his criminal case — and because of that, he is pulling his request for a new trial.

A Calculated Move In Federal Court

The former FTX chief executive filed a letter Wednesday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, withdrawing a Rule 33 motion he had been pursuing to overturn his conviction.

The withdrawal, he made clear, is not final. He dropped the motion without prejudice, meaning he can bring it back after his appeal and his separate request to have a different judge assigned to the case are resolved.

Bankman-Fried, 32, is currently held at the Federal Correctional Institution in Lompoc, California, where he is serving a 25-year sentence handed down after his 2023 conviction on fraud and related charges tied to the collapse of FTX.

At its peak, the crypto exchange was one of the largest in the world.

His decision to pull the motion came after Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered him to explain whether lawyers had helped him draft an earlier filing — a pro se document, meaning one submitted without formal legal representation.

Federal prosecutors had raised doubts about whether Bankman-Fried had written the filing on his own, particularly after his mother, Barbara Fried, sent her own letter to the court. She had no legal standing to do so.

Questions About Who Wrote What

In his Wednesday response, Sam Bankman-Fried said he consulted with his parents while writing the letter but described himself as the “ultimate author of the documents.”

He said the need to respond to the court’s questions had taken time away from preparing a fuller response to prosecutors opposing his new trial request. That, combined with his stated belief that Judge Kaplan would not treat the matter fairly, led him to withdraw the motion.

His bid to have Kaplan removed from the case predates Wednesday’s filing. Back in February, Bankman-Fried asked a court to assign a different judge to rule on his new trial request, accusing Kaplan of showing “extreme prejudice.”

That request remains active. So does his appeal of both his conviction and his sentence, which is pending before the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Outside the courtroom, Bankman-Fried has made no secret of his interest in a presidential pardon. According to reports, he has posted publicly praising US President Donald Trump’s crypto-related policies and his administration’s military moves in Iran.

But Trump has shown no sign of extending any relief. Based on reports from a January interview with The New York Times, Trump said flatly that he had no plans to pardon the convicted founder of FTX.

Featured image from Getty Images, chart from TradingView