Sam Bankman-Fried recently contended that being sent to jail will violate his “free speech right.” The FTX co-founder was also against the revocation of his bond. Last week, U.S. prosecutors asked the court to revoke Bankman-Fried’s $250 million bond.
As reported by Watcher Guru, SBF was granted a $250 million bail in December 2022. That had been recognized as the highest pre-trial bail bond in the history of the U.S. Two other individuals of “considerable means” also signed the bond.
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Being Detained Raises ‘Serious’ First Amendment Issues: SBF’s lawyer
Recently, the New York Times published an article featuring excerpts from a diary written by Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research. After the article went live, prosecutors pointed fingers at Bankman-Fried for providing quotes from the diary to the media house. They also accused him of talking to the reporter who wrote the story. This act intended to “intimidate” Ellison, according to the prosecutors. Opposing the aforementioned allegations, Bankman-Fried’s lawyer Mark Cohen wrote to Judge Lewis Kaplan,
“Mr. Bankman-Fried’s contact with the New York Times reporter was not an attempt to intimidate Ms. Ellison or taint the jury pool. It was a proper exercise of his rights to make fair comment on an article already in progress, for which the reporter already had alternate sources.”
Sending Bankman-Fried to jail because he talked to a reporter will raise “serious” First Amendment issues, the lawyer claimed. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution deals with the protection of the freedom of speech, freedom of the press, etc. Choen further added,
“As the government concedes, criminal defendants have a right to talk to the press about their case to influence their public image and try to protect their reputation, as long as the communications are not calculated to pervert the course of justice.”
Bankman-Fried has been under house arrest since December. He has been largely confined to his parents’ Palo Alto home. Ellison, on the other hand, has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with prosecutors.
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