Sam Bankman-Fried’s retrial request rejected by judge citing lack of new evidence
A U.S. federal judge has rejected Sam Bankman-Frieds request for a new trial, closing off his latest attempt to challenge his fraud conviction tied to the collapse of FTX.A U.S. judge has denied Sam Bankman-Frieds request for a new trial, rejecting claims that new witnesses could alter the outcome.Judge Lewis Kaplan has ruled that the cited witnesses were not newly discovered and said the defence could have sought their testimony during the trial.The court has dismissed allegations of government pressure on witnesses as unsupported, while Bankman-Frieds appeal remains ongoing. According to a ruling issued Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, the former FTX chief failed to present any valid new evidence, with the court stating that the witnesses cited in his motion were neither newly discovered nor unavailable during trial. “None of the witnesses, for example, is ‘newly discovered,’” Kaplan wrote, adding that Bankman-Fried could have sought to compel their testimony but did not. Court filings show the judge also dismissed claims that the absence of those witnesses stemmed from government pressure, describing the argument as “wildly conspiratorial and entirely contradicted by the record.” The motion itself, Kaplan wrote, formed part of “a plan to rescue his reputation” that had been conceived after