Judge rejects Bankman-Fried's bid for new trial, calls conspiracy theory baseless

US District Judge Lewis Kaplan denied Sam Bankman-Fried’s motion for a new trial, ruling that the FTX founder’s claims of newly discovered witnesses and Biden-era DOJ intimidation were contradicted by the record. Kaplan noted that none of the three witnesses Bankman-Fried cited were actually new — all were known to him during the original trial, and his defense never moved to compel their testimony.

The judge reserved particular skepticism for Ryan Salame, a cooperating witness who pleaded guilty and now claims via social media posts that he lied on the stand. Kaplan said such unsworn, self-serving statements fall far short of the bar required to justify reopening a case, and treating them as credible would mean accepting that Salame perjured himself during his own guilty plea.

Bankman-Fried, sentenced to 25 years in 2024 for orchestrating one of the largest financial frauds in US history, also asked Kaplan to recuse himself. The judge framed the entire motion as a waste of judicial resources, noting an appeal is already pending in another court and that a new judge would need to absorb an extensive, complex record to entertain what he called wildly conspiratorial theories.