FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried ordered to jail
Does this make your day?
The luck ran out for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on Friday, when a New York judge ordered that he be confined to jail in advance of his October trial.
The former billionaire had repeatedly angered both prosecutors and the court while out on bail following his arrest in December. Most recently, he leaked documents to The New York Times about his former lover Caroline Ellison, who once ran Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund and is likely to be a witness in his trial.
Prosecutors framed the leaks as a possible attempt at witness tampering, both by intimidating Ellison and influencing public perception of her in the media. An assistant U.S. attorney argued in court last month that there was “no set of conditions short of detention to ensure the safety of the community.”
Judge Lewis Kaplan agreed that defendant Bankman-Fried has a right to try and repair his reputation. “But I find that there is a practical possibility [leaking documents] was intended to have [witnesses] back off.”
Who else wants to play chicken with the courts? Specifically, with Judge Tanya Chutkan, the judge assigned to Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 case?
On Friday, Chutkan issued a protective order following a hearing that special counsel Jack Smith requested a week ago after Trump “posted a message to his social media platform, Truth Social, saying, ‘IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!'” ABC News reports.
Trump famously, perhaps reflexively, tries to delay, delay, delay his way out of legal trouble. Chutkan on Friday threw his words back in his face, perhaps more politely than in the graphic above. She did not threaten prison if Trump disobeyed her order, but perhaps something worse: a speedier trial.
“The more a party makes inflammatory statements about this case which could taint the jury pool or intimidate potential witnesses, the greater the urgency will be that we proceed to trial to ensure a jury pool from which we can select an impartial jury,” Chutkan told Trump’s attorneys on Friday.
Is the ever-petulant, 77-year-old former president playing chicken with the wrong judge? Will Bankman-Fried’s jailing make any impression on a teetotaler so drunk on himself, he’s bulletproof?
To Be Continued.