Prosecutors Move to Block FTX Sam Bankman-Fried’s Retrial Bid, Calling His New Evidence Claims ‘Deeply Misleading’
US prosecutors filed a 44-page opposition brief on March 11 in Manhattan federal court, asking Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to deny FTX Sam Bankman-Fried’s request for a new trial on the fraud and conspiracy charges for which he is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence.
Bankman-Fried, the former chief executive of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was convicted by a jury in November 2023 on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy tied to the misuse of billions of dollars in customer funds.
His February retrial motion was filed without legal counsel, Bankman-Fried is representing himself, through his mother, and centred on three arguments: suppressed witness testimony, FTX’s alleged solvency at collapse, and what he described as political weaponisation of the justice system.
Prosecutors dismantled each in turn. On the witness testimony argument, Bankman-Fried had contended that two former FTX executives, Daniel Chapsky and Ryan Salame, could have challenged the government’s account of FTX’s financial condition had they testified.
Prosecutors responded that both men were “fully known to the defence before trial,” disqualifying their testimony as newly discovered evidence under Rule 33 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which requires that evidence be both newly discovered and beyond the defence’s reasonable reach at the time of the original trial. Awareness of the witnesses before trial fails that standard on its face.
The Solvency Argument, Rejected Again
The solvency claim received the sharpest language in the government’s filing. “The motion’s most aggressive claim, that FTX was solvent, that customers have since been made whole, and that the prosecution therefore rested on a lie, is factually wrong, legally irrelevant, and deeply misleading,” prosecutors wrote.
They cited internal FTX data showing the exchange held only approximately 105 Bitcoin against customer claims approaching 100,000 Bitcoin at one point. Prosecutors added that subsequent asset recovery through bankruptcy does not retroactively justify the underlying conduct.
In November 2025, appellate judges at the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit signalled skepticism toward similar arguments, noting that solvency did not appear to be the central issue at trial. That appeal remains active and is separate from the Rule 33 motion now before Judge Kaplan.
The Political Persecution Claim
Bankman-Fried’s assertion that the prosecution represented politically motivated persecution by the Biden administration was also dismissed. Prosecutors noted the internal contradiction: he was one of the largest Democratic donors in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles, and the campaign finance violations he was charged with were committed in service of those contributions.
“The defendant’s weaponization narrative offers no basis for a new trial,” the filing stated. President Trump separately told the New York Times in January he had no intention of pardoning Bankman-Fried, closing what had briefly been speculated as a potential avenue given the administration’s crypto-friendly positioning.
Judge Kaplan is expected to rule in the coming weeks or months. Post-conviction Rule 33 motions are rarely granted; courts have historically required clear evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or new material that was demonstrably beyond the defence’s reach at the time of trial. The government’s filing argues neither condition is met here.
