FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried's Attorneys Renew Push for 'Temporary Release' Ahead of October Trial

Turning now to Sam Baman Fried, his attorneys have filed a new motion to secure his temporary release from prison for legal defense work. Joining us now to discuss is Coindesk global policy and regulation. Managing editor Nick Day, who is also the editor of coin desks, state of crypto newsletter. Good morning, Nick and Happy Monday. Good morning. All right, Nick. I feel like I'm having Deja Vu, didn't we already go through this? Yeah, this does seem to be coming up quite a bit right now. Sam feeds, uh, defense team has filed another letter, uh, basically hoping that he will be allowed out of jail long enough to work in his defense, uh, at least five days a week or even, you know, potentially going for a temporary release. All right. And just take us, um, on a little walk of what's happened here. He's already, the judge has already denied that temporary release, right. And he is allowed to meet with his attorneys in prison. So, is there any information on why they would be filing for this again? Yeah. So the argument the attorneys are making basically comes down to this, all of the discovery all of the information that's gonna happen, that trial, you know, whatever it's gonna get produced, whatever evidence there is, is only accessible online. There's just too many files to print it out. You need a laptop and ideally you need a laptop connected to the internet because a lot of this information is on an AWS database or on another database that, you know, you can't easily transfer to a hard drive, uh, something which even the, you know, doj seems to have conceded, uh is a factor in some of the past hearings. Now, what the defense team wants is or what they claim is that be fried, you know, has not really had the ability to properly work on his defense over the last couple of weeks since he was remanded into custody. Um, apparently before he was sent back to jail, he had a spreadsheet that he was working on that he was adding to saying, uh, you know, here's what evidence there is and here's some context around that, things like that. He has not been able to work on that in jail because the laptop he has been provided. Uh right now doesn't really have, you know, much battery life, much internet access and it's severely restricted on what it can access. So, you know, in some, the argument is he has a right to work on his defense. He is not able to work on his defense. Therefore, his rights are being infringed what's the likelihood that this temporary release is gonna be approved? Nick? Um, I, I think my personal guess is it seems more unlikely than not. Um, you know, the judge has already, uh, you know, ruled against having a five day a week, uh, you know, released to proper offices in the US Attorney's office. Uh, basically, you know, this was a previous motion where the defense team said. All right. Well, let's, you know, see if the jail can produce Sam Bakeman free to the US Attorney's office and we can just work with him with a couple of laptops five days a week. Uh The judge basically said, no, not really. He's allowing one laptop and, you know, somewhat more limited access. There is a hearing scheduled for this Wednesday. So, you know, I think we'll hear more in depth arguments and we'll get a better sense of how the judge is, you know, viewing this. But so far, you know, again, if you look at the context of this entire thing, Bank M Fried was out on bail, you know, prior to August. And because of, you know, for example, his access to Google Drive, he was able to share these documents according to the DOJ which led to his bail being revoked. You know, the judge has already said he believes that Bank MRI being out in the streets is a danger to the general public and to, you know, potential witnesses. So it seems like an uphill battle for the defense team here. Nick. Thanks so much for joining this morning. We'll see you tomorrow.