A federal judge has sided with the United States Department of Justice in motions aimed at precluding the testimony of 7 witnesses on behalf of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, or SBF.<\/p>\n
In a Sept. 21 filing with U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Lewis Kaplan granted in limine <\/em>motions from prosecutors which would bar certain witnesses from testifying in SBF\u2019s criminal trial. Kaplan provided different legal grounds for granting the DoJ\u2019s motions against certain witnesses, which included the proposed testimony being \u201cnot at all clear\u201d, irrelevant to the trial, or would otherwise seemingly obfuscate the facts of the case for the jury.<\/p>\n The witnesses at issue in the criminal case included Thomas Bishop, Brian Kim, Bradley Smith,\u00a0Lawrence Akka, Joseph Pimbley, Peter Vinella , and Andrew Di Wu, many of whom are professionals in the legal field. Court filings from Aug. 28 suggested that SBF’s legal team could have paid upwards of $1,200 per hour for their testimony.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kaplan left the door open for SBF\u2019s defense team to call some of the individuals in response to testimony to witnesses for the U.S. government. However, he denied a motion from Bankman-Fried\u2019s lawyers which could have excluded testimony from Peter Easton, a University of Notre Dame accountancy professor, who will speak on FTX customer fiat accounts.<\/p>\n