by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack
LITERARY SDNY, Oct 30 -- Thirtieth day of October and now Sam Bankman-Fried was on the cross.
For real this time, in front of the jury. And the prosecutors' boss, Damian Williams, came to see the show. He'd done it for Bob "Golden Bar" Menendez earlier in the month.
But this was the end of a show, not the beginning. And Sam, it seemed, was going down. Or was he?
Did he remember the podcast where he'd said he had no involvement in Alameda? Well no he did not.
Had he spoken with the crypto book author for 11 hours, as the business wire apparently claimed? No, not even five. One hour at most, Sam said, implying that these people were hangers-on.
Sam had better things to do. Thing like flying to Washington in private jets in most of his 100 trips for the year.
Did he remember taking a private jet to the Super Bowl, where he just stumbled into Michael Kives' box for a photo op and hand-over of hundreds of millions in FTX customers' funds? No he did not. No memory of how he traveled. Because he traveled so much.
Was Bankman-Fried being stoic, with the repeated Yup, Yup, Yups? By, when forced to read back his own claims, doing it in a sarcastic voice?
He thought he was smarter than everyone, that much was made clear. And his parents had propped him up in that, and did so now, to the end, even as Joe Bankman's name popped up the exhibit screen on small group Signal chats right to the very end. Would it be Joe's end too?
Damian Williams left before the day's cross was over, like someone from an LA Dodgers game.
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