The convicted former FTX CEO is still working in court, even though sources say the White House won’t entertain a presidential pardon.
The US government’s lawyers have two weeks to respond to Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried’s request for a new criminal trial.
On Wednesday, Judge Lewis Kaplan said in a filing with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York that the US government must reply to SBF’s request for a new trial by March 11. Earlier this month, the former CEO of FTX, found guilty of seven felonies in 2023 and sentenced to 25 years in jail, requested a fresh trial. He said that additional witness testimony could improve his case.
Many people once looked up to Bankman-Fried as one of the most important people in the crypto and blockchain business. He was at the core of the FTX collapse issue. He quit as CEO in November 2022 and subsequently, in the US was charged with misusing user cash.
SBF’s lawyers filed an appeal of the conviction and punishment after Kaplan sentenced the former CEO to 25 years in prison in March 2024. As of Thursday, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had not yet made a decision on the filing.
Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research, was freed in January after spending 440 days in US detention. She testified against SBF at trial as part of a plea deal with US authorities. Ryan Salame, who used to be the co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, was given a prison sentence of more than seven years and is still in jail at the time of this writing.
Source: Courtlistener
Presidential pardon speculation resurfaces
The former CEO didn’t say much on social media during his first year in prison, but subsequently he started posting messages supporting US President Donald Trump and questioning information concerning the collapse of FTX.
In March 2025, SBF told political pundit Tucker Carlson that he got along better with Republicans than with Democrats. This interview is said to have resulted to his transfer to a federal prison.
He had posted multiple times on X this year, saying that there was “political bias” in his case. Bankman-Fried complimented Trump for “standing up” to this kind of unfairness, but he also criticised Kaplan for being in charge of the civil defamation case against the then-presidential candidate in 2023.
Source: Sam Bankman-Fried
Even though Bankman-Fried worked hard and many people in the crypto business expected that Trump might give the former CEO a pardon, the White House has maintained over and over again that he is not contemplating it. Both a January New York Times interview and a Tuesday Fortune piece reiterated this. Since he took office, Trump has pardoned several people in the crypto and blockchain industries, such as Changpeng Zhao, the former CEO of Binance, and Ross Ulbricht, the creator of Silk Road.