Bankman-Fried Withdraws Request for New Trial

Sam Bankman-Fried withdrew his Rule 33 request for a new trial in a letter received by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Tuesday. The letter was sent from a low-security federal facility in Lompoc, California, and follows a motion filed in February after his 2023 conviction in the collapse of FTX.

Bankman-Fried acknowledged that he shared drafts of the pro se motion with his parents, Barbara Fried and Joe Bankman. He wrote that they made editorial suggestions and helped print the document, while adding that he wrote most of the filing himself. “I am the ultimate author of the documents and wrote the bulk of them myself,” he wrote.

The court had ordered Bankman-Fried to clarify whether other lawyers assisted with the Rule 33 filing. Judge Kaplan warned that misleading answers could expose the defendant to perjury charges. Bankman-Fried wrote that his appellate lawyer, Alexandra Shapiro, and the attorneys who tried his case did not provide significant input: “They had no significant input into the ultimate motion,” he wrote.

Bankman-Fried said he was withdrawing the motion because he believed he would not receive a fair hearing from Judge Kaplan. In the letter he wrote that he would not “get a fair hearing on this topic in front of you,” repeating an argument his appellate team raised about perceived bias at trial.

The February motion sought a new trial on grounds that some allegations in the indictment were false, including claims about the misuse of customer funds at FTX. With the withdrawal, the immediate bid for a new trial ends while other appeals and filings remain possible.

Additional filings around the motion included a separate letter from Barbara Fried, who identified herself as authorized to submit papers on her son’s behalf because he is incarcerated. Bankman-Fried remains in custody serving a 25-year sentence imposed in 2024.