Sam Bankman-Fried plans to testify in his defense at his federal fraud trial, his lawyer Mark Cohen said in a teleconference Wednesday. “Things have been changing a lot on our side,” Cohen told Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in a teleconference about scheduling Wednesday morning, “and our client is also going to be testifying.”
The move puts an exciting coda at the tail-end of the trial’s witnesses, after one fascinating piece of testimony after another. While he’s offered interviews and Twitter (now X) posts about what led to the collapse of his crypto exchange FTX and his trading fund Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried has not given a large-scale public explanation as to his view of what occurred at the companies. He is charged with multi-billion dollar fraud: Taking money that belonged to FTX customers and routing it to Alameda, and lying to investors, customers, and lenders.
And in the weeks of the trial so far, attendees have heard from his ex-girlfriend, his ex-college-housemate, his little brother’s close friend, and others about the inner workings of FTX, Alameda and Bankman-Fried’s approach to business.
While defendants always have the right to testify in their defense, it can be a risky move. Yes, jurors might hear Bankman-Fried’s justifications for his actions—and get to see the personal side of the defendant—but it also opens Bankman-Fried up to cross-examination from the prosecution, which has been sharp and aggressive so far.
Cohen said he expects Bankman-Fried’s direct testimony to last “somewhere around the length of Gary, Caroline and Nishad’s testimony,” referring to witnesses and former Bankman-Fried employees (and ex-friends) Gary Wang, Caroline Ellison, and Nishad Singh. Those witnesses lasted two to three days each; Cohen said he expects Bankman-Fried’s testimony to go most of Thursday (after a few short prosecution and defense witnesses in the morning) and likely into Friday. Prosecutor Nicolas Roos said he wasn’t sure how long cross-examination would take: it will depend on “what he says,” Roos said of Bankman-Fried.
The trial, after a brief break, continues tomorrow morning.
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