The very first day of Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial, Judge Lewis Kaplan told Sam Bankman-Fried that—despite what his lawyers suggested—it was his criminal trial. If he wanted to take the stand and testify for the defense, that was ultimately his decision.
And he appears to have made up his mind.
Mark Cohen, SBF’s attorney, confirmed with the judge in a court hearing yesterday that SBF would testify. There are three other witnesses who will go before him—but he is still expected to take the stand later today.
This is week 4 of Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial—the most significant criminal trial for the startup world since Theranos—and it’s been hard to pull away for too long.
As for SBF’s testimony, defendants typically choose not to testify at their own trial, as it poses the risk of self-incrimination. But this is SBF we are talking about. Ever since FTX blew up, SBF has made a series of attempts to talk his way out of things and explain what happened. (Maybe you recall the now infamous “I fucked up” thread) It’s very possible that SBF could end up being rather convincing to jurors. After all, he has a history of being able to captivate an audience. He raised, in total, a whopping $1.8 billion with a balance sheet that looked like this.
The alternative is that he puts his foot in his mouth, which could easily happen on cross-examination.
I guess we’ll find out today.
Carta blasts a note to clients…Yesterday clients of equity management startup Carta received an email from Carta CEO Henry Ward encouraging them to read the memo he published in response to my story from earlier this month as well as the Business Insider story published earlier this week. In his piece, Ward doesn’t contest the accuracy of my story, so I don’t feel the need to respond. Although I would like to point out that John Carreyrou was not the first journalist to investigate a startup. He did win two Pulitzers, but not for his reporting on Theranos.
See you tomorrow,
Jessica Mathews
Twitter: @jessicakmathews
Email: jessica.mathews@fortune.com
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