Sam Bankman-Fried files memo asking court to block prosecutor evidence

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, filed a memorandum on Sep. 1 asking the court to deny the prosecutor’s in limine requests. 

The memorandum, penned by SBF’s lawyer Mark Cohen, calls the requests filed by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) “unfounded and overbroad,” among other things.

He argues that most of the issues raised by the government cannot be properly addressed at the current stage. Additionally, the memorandum claims the requests “seek to admit irrelevant and prejudicial evidence regarding conduct that is no longer or never was charged, to undercut any potential defense, and to admit broad categories of hearsay and other improper evidence.”

It goes on to argue that the requests from the prosecutor are “unsupported by law and unworkable” in practice and, therefore, shouldn’t be granted.

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This memorandum comes after multiple recent filings from the DOJ asking the court to intervene in various aspects of the case. On Aug. 28, the government filed a motion to bar all of SBF’s expert witnesses from testifying in court. 

The DOJ argued that all of the proposed experts, along with their accompanying disclosures, “suffer from an array of deficiencies,” warranting being banned from the trial.

A day later, on Aug. 29, the prosecutor filed another motion that called SBF’s fraud allegation defense “irrelevant” in its current state and requested additional disclosures to the already planned defense.

Meanwhile, SBF’s lawyers have been pushing for a temporary release, stating that the accommodations the authorities provided are insufficient for him to prepare for the October trial. 

His lawyers are also in the process of appealing the court’s decision to revoke his bail, which was decided on Aug. 11. The defense claimed the bail was revoked as a “retaliation” for his exercising First Amendment rights.

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