US Prosecutors Urge Judge to Deny Sam Bankman-Fried Retrial

Sam Bankman-Fried's push for a new criminal trial hit a wall Thursday when federal prosecutors filed a response urging a judge to reject the motion outright, arguing that the former FTX chief has failed to clear the legal bar required to secure a Sam Bankman-Fried retrial, according to a Bloomberg report citing court documents.

Why Prosecutors Say the Retrial Motion Should Fail

The core argument from the government is simple: the witnesses Bankman-Fried is leaning on were never hidden from his defense team. Prosecutors contend that testimony from former FTX executives Ryan Salame and Daniel Chapsky does not meet the legal definition of newly discovered evidence because both men were known to the defense well before the 2023 trial began. The law sets a high bar for granting retrials on the basis of new evidence — and the bar exists precisely to stop defendants from cycling through witnesses after the verdict doesn't go their way.

Bankman-Fried filed the retrial motion back in February, claiming that what Salame and Chapsky could say would undercut the government's picture of FTX's finances in the months before its collapse. The defense framed their testimony as potentially game-changing. Prosecutors clearly disagree — and the Sam Bankman-Fried retrial dispute now sits in the lap of Judge Kaplan, who ordered this response by March 11 but has not yet signaled how he will rule.

What Was the FTX Fraud Conviction?

What did SBF get convicted of and what sentence did he receive?

A jury handed down a guilty verdict in November 2023 on seven counts — fraud and conspiracy charges tied directly to how customer funds were handled at FTX and its sister firm, Alameda Research. The FTX fraud conviction resulted in a 25-year prison sentence, one of the stiffest punishments ever handed to a crypto executive. The case turned on whether Bankman-Fried knowingly directed the misuse of billions in client deposits — and prosecutors built that case largely through testimony from his former inner circle.

That inner circle included Ryan Salame, a co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets who later pleaded guilty in related proceedings. Salame's own legal situation is instructive here: the Ryan Salame sentencing resulted in a 90-month prison term. Prosecutors' point is that if Salame's story was relevant to SBF's defense, that relevance existed before the 2023 trial — not as some revelation conjured after the verdict.

Does the Presidential Pardon Angle Still Matter?

The retrial fight doesn't happen in a vacuum. For months, observers watched Bankman-Fried's public moves with one question in mind: is he angling for a presidential pardon? On February 1, he praised Donald Trump's crypto policy stance across social media — generating immediate speculation that this was less about genuine enthusiasm and more about building goodwill with the White House.

Trump shut that door publicly on January 9, telling the New York Times he had no intention of pardoning Bankman-Fried. With clemency off the table — at least publicly — the Second Circuit appeal and this retrial motion are the two remaining legal levers. The judge hasn't ruled yet. That wait could be a long one.