The first week of the criminal trial of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has come to a close, with his former friends and FTX colleagues Adam Yedidia and Gary Wang delivering powerful testimonies that are forming the foundations for the prosecution’s arguments — arguments that the defense may have a difficult time surmounting. Sam Enzer, partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, and Brian Klein, partner at Waymaker, discuss Alameda’s special privileges coded into the FTX software, the reason why a scorched FTX customer may have been chosen as the first witness, and why upcoming key witnesses are going to be a “real problem” for the defense.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform.
Show highlights:
- What we learned about the prosecution and defenses strategies after the first week of the trial
- How the jury being mostly professionals may impact deliberations
- Why Brian believes someone “out of the mainstream” would make an ideal juror for the defense
- Why Sam believes the defense’s opening was stronger than the prosecution’s
- Which arguments may be the most difficult for Sam Bankman-Fried's lawyers to defend
- Why the defense’s “building a plane as you’re flying” analogy may come back to hurt them in closing
- Why Sam believes the order of the witness testimony so far is helping the prosecution build the foundation of its case
- Whether Adam Yedidia’s testimony was effective at establishing him as a credible witness
- Whether the fact that some witnesses are cooperating to avoid jail time will impact the jury’s decision
- What Gary Wang, former CTO of FTX, revealed about Alameda's special privileges coded into FTX software and how it wasn’t an “oversight”
- Whether Judge Kaplan is growing impatient with the defense
- Whether the prosecution's objections were sustained reasonably by Judge Kaplan
- Why upcoming insider witnesses pose a “real problem” to the defense
- Why it's "not even an open question" that the defense team will appeal if they lose the case
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