Sam Bankman-Fried Remains In Jail As Judge Denies Pre-Trial Release Request

Sam Bankman-Fried, once regarded as the golden boy of crypto, will remain in jail until his trial after a U.S. judge denied his request for temporary release.

District Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York denied Bankman-Fried's claim that the poor internet access in prison hindered his trial preparation and found it an insufficient basis to grant his temporary release.

"The defendant had not made any detailed showing as to specific material that he claims he has been unable to access personally and the reasons why any such personal inability actually would impede his defense," Kaplan said.

In his three-page memo, the judge argued that Bankman-Fried had 7.5 months and "extensive access" to materials available electronically, as well as to the internet and telephone before his bail was revoked on Aug. 11, adding that the "defendant had months in which to explore the discovery and make whatever other investigations he wished by electronic means."

Kaplan further said, "There has been no persuasive showing that this did not permit him to prepare for trial except to the extent that some of the materials now available had not been produced by the government until recently. Moreover, the recently produced documents are text searchable indexed productions, the majority of which came from the defendant's own Google accounts and therefore were accessible to the defendant long before the government received those very same materials in a late production from Google."

The district judge also informed Bankman-Fried's team that whatever he is facing right now is of his own making and noted that the court accommodated his camp's request for a later trial date, which is Oct. 3.

He added that "... when the defendant began complaining that his recent incarceration made trial preparation by that date more difficult for him, the Court offered to consider any request by the defendant for a substantial adjournment of the trial to give him more time in which to prepare. Yet the defendant conspicuously failed to request any additional time."

Kaplan said that Bankman-Fried's premise that he should personally review and evaluate every piece of the discovery in the case is "incorrect," saying that he is represented by "extremely able retained lawyers."

Moreover, the judge noted that Bankman-Fried has "not made any detailed showing as to specific materials that he claims he has been unable to access personally and the reasons why any such personal inability actually would impede his defense."

The judge's decision came after weeks of back-and-forth court filings about whether the co-founder of the now-bankrupt crypto empire FTX would be released from jail ahead of his trial.