Saturday, November 4, 2023

Bankman-Fried Is Cross Examined on Claims to Media Before He Was Arrested in the Bahamas


by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack

SDNY COURTHOUSE, Oct 30 – For US v Sam Bankman-Fried, after more than a day of jury selection, late morning on October 4 the twelve and six alternate were selected. Inner City Press live tweeted the voir dire here and more below

On October 30, SBF was cross examined, this time in front of the jury. Some of it in thread here

Cross:

AUSA Sassoon: Mr. Bankman-Fried, you owned 90% of Alameda? SBF: Yes. AUSA: Fair to say FTX and Alameda were affiliated? SBF's lawyer Cohen: Objection, form.

AUSA Sassoon: You were a billionaire? SBF: Yes

 AUSA Sassoon: You would not say you were not involved at all in Alameda trading? SBF: Depends what you mean by trading. 

AUSA: You were receiving information about Alameda throughout 2022? SBF: Yes. AUSA: You were not walled off, right? SBF: I was not

 AUSA Sassoon: You met with Caroline Ellison and Sam Trabucco? SBF: Yes. AUSA: You can input on trading decisions, yes?

SBF: Yes. AUSA: You were in a chat group called Vertex? SBF: Yes.

AUSA Sassoon: You told Caroline when to buy certain crypto currencies, correct? SBF: I'm not sure what you are referring to.

AUSA: Show the witness GX 1630. You, Ms. Ellison and Sam Trabucco, Jan 25, 2022 - you called Alameda "we," right? SBF: Yes.

 AUSA Sassoon: You ordered her to trade and Caroline said, Sounds good; you replied LOL. SBF: Yep.

AUSA Sassoon: You told her to trade Japanese government bonds? SBF: Yes. AUSA: She sent you spreadsheets about hedging, and that's trading, right? SBF: Yes.

 AUSA Sassoon: You were arrested in December, right? SBF: Yep. AUSA: You did interviews, right? SBF: Yep.

AUSA: You understood it was important to tell the truth, correct? SBF: As best I could.

 AUSA Sassoon: You ran what you said through a public relations filter, right? SBF: Yes

AUSA: You did an interview with Mario Nawfal on Twitter Spaces on Dec 22, 2022? SBF: I did a few

AUSA: You told Mario Nawful you were not involved? SBF: I don't remember that

 SBF's lawyer Cohen: Your Honor, may we have a sidebar please? Judge Kaplan: Yes.

Then: AUSA: We off GX 2508 and 2508T. Judge Kaplan: Received. 

Audio plays: SBF says, I was intentionally not getting involved due to a concern about conflict of interest

 AUSA Sassoon: That's your voice, right? SBF: Sounds like me.

AUSA: Did you speak with the Financial Times? SBF: I don't remember. AUSA: GX 2503. Mr. Bankman-Fried, do you see this Dec 4, 2022 article? SBF: Yes.

 AUSA Sassoon: (reading) The FTX founder insisted he had walled himself off. Do you see that? SBF: Yes.

AUSA: These were before you knew you had been indicted? SBF: Yes. AUSA: You thought your messages had been auto-deleted? SBF: Some of them

 AUSA Sasoon: Look at this, The Fantastic Three... You did not know that Caroline Ellison would be cooperating with the government, correct?

SBF: Yes.  AUSA: You didn't know the government had a search warrant for your Google account? SBF: I suspected.

AUSA Sassoon: You saved the transcript from Caroline Ellison's guilty plea to your Google Drive, correct?

SBF: Yes. AUSA: You reviewed documents from Caroline's Google Drive? SBF: Yes.

AUSA Sassoon: Do you agree you know how to tell a good story?

SBF: It depends on what matrix you use.

[Yeah]

  More on Substack here

 Inner City Press live tweeted the voir dire and now, more on Substack here
and all on Patreon here

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