At the start of the trial, Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers are pushing to exclude their testimony from FTX users.

The criminal trial of the former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is currently underway in New York, and the legal team aims to prevent the testimony of users and investors on the exchange.

In a separate filing on October 2 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, SBF's lawyers objected to prosecutors' pre-trial motions asking FTX customers and investors to question and trust how the cryptocurrency exchange handles assets. They also sought to block the testimony of a former FTX user — an unnamed Ukrainian citizen — using “live two-way video” in part on Sixth Amendment grounds.

The filing on FTX's user testimony states that “decisions cannot be made in the abstract against specific witnesses who give an individual's understanding of certain statements or relationships with FTX or Mr. Bankman-Fried.”

According to SBF's legal team, prosecutors were trying to “have it both ways” by blocking the same witnesses presented by the defense who understood how FTX managed their money. Defense attorneys described the request as “premature” and argued that the case was a judicial review.

“[T]It appears that the government wants evidence of how customers (and other victims) understood the relationship they chose to enter into with FTX, which would be presented by the government but not included if presented by the defense.

Lawyers also argued that the testimony of the Ukrainian witness “appears to allude to the problems and personal circumstances created by Russia's occupation of Ukraine” and “arouses the jury's sympathy and anger.” In the year Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and many parts of the country have faced a constant threat of violence since then, making international travel difficult.

“Courts routinely exclude relevant evidence unrelated to the facts of the case that might give jurors sympathy,” the lawyers said. “[T]In what circumstances he [the Ukrainian user] He testifies and the reason for his absence from the trial is prejudice itself […] Jurors will inevitably have to guess why a Ukrainian citizen (no other witness) is testifying on video, and the most obvious answers will surely provoke ‘sympathizers who have nothing to do with the merits of the case'.

Related: DOJ prepares witnesses in Bankman-Fried trial, highlights FTX asset management

The pleas were filed hours before jury selection for the Bankman-Fried criminal trial was set to begin in New York City. At the time of publication, Judge Louis Kaplan was asking jurors about any potential conflicts that would prevent them from serving in the trial, which runs until November.

Since Kaplan revoked Bankuman-Fried's bail in August, the former FTX CEO has remained mostly incarcerated despite several unsuccessful attempts by his lawyers to temporarily release him. He faces two criminal trials in October 2023 and March 2024, to which he has pleaded not guilty to 12 felony charges related to the alleged fraud against FTX and Alameda Research.

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