Sam Bankman-Fried withdrew his Rule 33 motion for a new trial, saying he won’t get a fair hearing from Judge Kaplan and preserving his right to refile after his direct appeal and reassignment request are resolved.
Posted April 23, 2026 at 6:36 am EST.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the former FTX CEO serving a 25-year federal prison sentence for fraud, requested to withdraw his motion for a new trial on Wednesday in a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Bankman-Fried said he was pulling the Rule 33 motion temporarily, because he “will not get a fair hearing on this topic” before Kaplan. He said he is seeking to withdraw his motion without prejudice to preserve his right to refile once his pending appeal and a separate request for judicial reassignment have been resolved.
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The filing also addressed questions Kaplan had raised about whether Bankman-Fried had received unauthorized legal assistance when preparing the motion. Prosecutors had cast doubt on whether the filing was truly pro se, partly because his mother, law professor Barbara Fried, had sent a separate letter to the court shortly beforehand.
Bankman-Fried said he conceived the Rule 33 motion, drafted it and performed the legal research while incarcerated in Brooklyn. However, he also admitted to sharing drafts with his parents for editorial and organizational suggestions. He said his parents also helped print the document, as he no longer had access to a word processor, and that a New York attorney retained briefly to assist had no significant input into the final version.
Bankman-Fried’s legal strategy has narrowed into two parallel tracks. His primary appeal of the 2023 conviction and 25-year sentence is under review by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In February, he separately asked that a different judge decide his new trial motion, accusing Kaplan of “extreme prejudice” throughout the case. That reassignment request remains pending.
Bankman-Fried was found guilty in November 2023 on all seven criminal counts related to the collapse of FTX and the misuse of customer funds.
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