A federal judge has set a March 11 deadline for the U.S. government to respond to Sam “SBF” Bankman‑Fried’s motion seeking a new criminal trial. In a Wednesday filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered the government to file its opposition within two weeks to Bankman‑Fried’s argument that newly available witness testimony could strengthen his defense.
Bankman‑Fried was convicted on seven felony counts in 2023 and later sentenced to 25 years in prison. He stepped down as FTX CEO in November 2022 after the exchange’s collapse and was charged in the U.S. with misusing customer funds. His legal team has filed appeals of both the conviction and the sentence; as of Thursday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had not issued a decision.
Several former FTX and Alameda executives have cooperated with prosecutors. Caroline Ellison, the former Alameda Research CEO who testified against Bankman‑Fried as part of a plea agreement, was released in January after 440 days in custody. Ryan Salame, a former co‑CEO of FTX Digital Markets, was sentenced to more than seven years and remains incarcerated.
There has been ongoing public speculation about whether Bankman‑Fried might pursue a presidential pardon. After a quiet first year behind bars, he began posting messages supportive of President Donald Trump and disputing mainstream accounts of FTX’s collapse. In March 2025 he granted an interview to Tucker Carlson — a move that was reported to have prompted his transfer to a federal correctional institution — and has said he has closer ties with Republicans than Democrats. He has also posted on X alleging political bias in his prosecution, praised Trump for challenging such bias, and criticized Judge Kaplan for presiding over a 2023 civil defamation case involving the then‑presidential candidate.
The White House has repeatedly said Trump is not considering a pardon for Bankman‑Fried, including in a January interview with The New York Times and in later reporting by Fortune. Still, the Trump administration has granted pardons to other figures from the crypto space, including former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.
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