Lawyers for the US government have two weeks to respond to Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried’s motion for a new criminal trial. In a Wednesday filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered the government to respond by March 11 to SBF’s request for a new trial, in which the former FTX CEO says new witness testimony could bolster his case.
Bankman-Fried was convicted on seven felony counts in 2023 and later sentenced to 25 years in prison. Once a prominent figure in crypto, he stepped down as FTX CEO in November 2022 amid the exchange’s collapse and was charged in the US with misusing customer funds. His lawyers have filed appeals of the conviction and sentence; the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had not ruled on that appeal as of Thursday.
Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, who testified against Bankman-Fried under a plea deal, was released in January after 440 days in custody. Ryan Salame, former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, was sentenced to more than seven years and remains incarcerated.
Speculation has swirled about whether Bankman-Fried might seek a presidential pardon. After largely staying silent during his first year in prison, he later began posting in support of President Donald Trump and disputing accounts of FTX’s collapse. In March 2025 he gave an interview to Tucker Carlson — a move that reportedly led to his transfer to a federal correctional institution — and has said he has stronger relationships with Republicans than Democrats. He has posted on X alleging “political bias” in his case, praising Trump for standing up to such bias and criticizing Kaplan for overseeing 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 New York Times interview and in subsequent reporting by Fortune. Trump has issued pardons to other crypto figures since taking office, including former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.
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