In a court filing submitted on March 8, 2023, lawyers representing Samuel Bankman-Fried (SBF), the CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, revealed that they would be requesting a postponement of his trial.
The request was made ahead of a conference scheduled to take place on March 10, where the lawyers will raise certain issues related to their client’s bail conditions, access to the FTX transactional database, and the motions schedule.
SBF bail conditions
The lawyers noted that the government recently submitted a letter to the court outlining the parties’ joint proposal for modifications to Mr. Bankman-Fried’s bail conditions.
The defense inadvertently omitted from the list of approved websites that Mr. Bankman-Fried may access, Cohen & Gresser’s ShareFile website, which they use to share documents with their client.
As a result, the lawyers are respectfully requesting that the website be added to the list of approved websites. The government has no objection to this request.
The defense has been working with counsel for the FTX Debtors to provide Mr. Bankman-Fried access to the FTX transactional database in a secure manner with several layers of monitoring capabilities.
However, the current bail conditions prohibit Mr. Bankman-Fried from using a VPN for any purpose, and as a result, he has not yet been able to begin reviewing the AWS Database, which is a substantial and critically important component of the discovery.
Motions schedule and discovery
Under the current motions schedule, the defense’s pretrial motions are due on April 3, 2023, and the Government’s response is due on April 24, 2023.
Regardless, the government recently superseded the indictment against Mr. Bankman-Fried and added several new counts. The defense also understands that they have not yet received a substantial portion of the discovery, including search warrant returns from thirty different Google accounts and the contents of at least four different electronic devices belonging to former FTX/Alameda employees.
The defense has requested that the government provide a full inventory of discovery left to be produced and a rough schedule for when they can expect to receive the outstanding materials. The government has represented that it will be making a substantial production soon.
However, in light of the superseding indictment and the substantial amount of discovery yet to be produced to the defense, the lawyers are requesting an adjournment of the motions scheduled to May 1, 2023, for the defense’s pretrial motions, May 22, 2023, for the Government’s response, and June 5, 2023, for the defense’s reply.
The lawyers representing SBF have noted that depending on the volume of the additional discovery and the timing of the productions, it may be necessary to request an adjournment of the trial, currently scheduled to begin on October 2, 2023.
While they are not making such an application at this time, they wanted to note this issue for the Court now in case they need to revisit this issue after receiving the additional discovery.
The conference on March 10, 2023, will provide further insight into the issues raised by SBF’s lawyers and the potential impact on the trial.
