Sam Bankman-Fried, the former FTX CEO serving a 25-year federal prison sentence for fraud, has withdrawn his Rule 33 motion for a new trial—but stopped well short of dropping his broader legal fight.
In a letter filed on April 22 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Bankman-Fried told presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan that he no longer believed he could receive a “fair hearing” on the motion in Kaplan’s courtroom. The withdrawal was filed “without prejudice,” meaning he retains the right to renew the request after his pending direct appeal and a separate request for judicial reassignment have been resolved.
“As I have had to focus on responding to these questions rather than drafting a response to the prosecution’s opposition, and because I do not believe I will get a fair hearing on this topic in front of you, I am now requesting to withdraw the Rule 33 motion, without prejudice to renewing it after my direct appeal and the related request for reassignment have been ruled upon,” Bankman-Fried wrote in the letter, which was made public via the federal court docket.
What Forced the Withdrawal
The move comes nearly a month after Judge Kaplan, on March 23, ordered Bankman-Fried to disclose under oath whether he had received unauthorized legal assistance in preparing the pro se motion—a filing made without attorney representation. The order followed prosecutors flagging a FedEx package sent to the court from Menlo Park, California, despite Bankman-Fried being incarcerated at the time, which raised questions about who had actually drafted his filings.
Bankman-Fried used Wednesday’s letter to address those concerns directly. He said he “conceived” of the Rule 33 motion, drafted multiple versions, and conducted most of the underlying legal research from his prison cell. He confirmed he did not consult his former attorney on the motion itself, though he shared drafts with his parents.
“They made editorial and organizational suggestions, some of which I incorporated into the motion,” Bankman-Fried said, referring to his parents. “They also helped print it, as I no longer had access to a word processor. I also shared earlier drafts with a New York attorney who was originally hired to represent me on the Rule 33 Motion before I decided to represent myself; they had no significant input into the ultimate motion.”
The scrutiny over authorship intensified in March after Bankman-Fried’s mother, Barbara Fried, submitted a letter to the court on her son’s behalf—a filing Judge Kaplan rejected on the grounds that she was not a member of the court’s bar and could not represent him via power of attorney.
The Appeal and Reassignment Bid Remain Active
Pulling the Rule 33 motion does not affect two other legal tracks Bankman-Fried is pursuing in parallel. His direct appeal of the 2023 conviction and 25-year sentence remains under review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Separately, his February request to have a different judge handle any future Rule 33 proceedings—in which he accused Kaplan of “extreme prejudice”—is still pending.
In that reassignment bid, Bankman-Fried has compared his case to the Delaware Chancery Court’s reassignment of several Elon Musk-related matters, arguing the grounds for recusing Kaplan are “at least as strong.” He has pointed to what he characterizes as Kaplan’s hostility during the 2023 trial, pre-verdict comments suggesting the evidence supported fraud, and alleged juror incentives, including pizza and car rides, to speed up deliberations.
Prosecutors have pushed back forcefully on those claims. In a 44-page opposition filed in March, federal prosecutors in Manhattan called Bankman-Fried’s political-persecution narrative “incoherent,” noting he was one of the largest Democratic donors during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles. They also pointed to what they described as a pre-conviction “to-do” list in which Bankman-Fried allegedly planned to reposition himself politically, appear on Tucker Carlson’s program, and publicly rebrand as a Republican.
What Comes Next
With the Rule 33 motion off the table for now, Bankman-Fried’s legal strategy narrows to two parallel tracks: the direct appeal before the Second Circuit, where appellate judges have previously expressed some skepticism toward aspects of the defense arguments, and the reassignment request before Judge Kaplan’s own court. A ruling on either could reopen the door to refiling the new trial motion.
Bankman-Fried, who is currently being held at the Federal Correctional Institution Lompoc I in California, has also publicly signaled interest in a presidential pardon. President Donald Trump told The New York Times in January that he had no intention of granting one.
For now, the withdrawal does not change the fundamental posture of the case. Bankman-Fried remains convicted on all seven felony counts from his 2023 trial and remains on course to serve out a sentence projected to run into the mid-2040s — unless the Second Circuit intervenes.
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