Criminal trials are not like the movies — they’re typically thin on suspense and surprise. As a trial proceeds, one usually has a pretty good sense of where a defendant stands, even if juries aren’t 100 percent predictable by nature. This is certainly true in United States v. Samuel Bankman-Fried, where so far, just about every sign points to a day of reckoning for crypto’s former wonder boy.
To be fair, the trial is not over, and Bankman-Fried’s lawyers have not even begun their defense. So there is still a mystery here: Do they even have a plan? Everybody is wondering the same thing right now, since so far, there’s a void where an explanation of SBF’s behavior should be. (The defense’s contention, during opening statements, that this was all his ex Caroline Ellison’s fault, appears to have been abandoned.) The lack of a coherent plan is such that I’ve speculated SBF’s legal team, led by attorney Mark S. Cohen, is hoping to win on appeal — essentially, drawing a foul so egregious from the prosecution or the court that any guilty verdict would be overturned and the 31-year old would be sprung free.
Then, on Tuesday, Cohen had a conversation with Judge Lewis Kaplan where he laid out his plan — or complete lack of one.
“We are still working through whether we are going to put a case on and, if so, of what nature,” he said. “But I continue to believe that if we do put on a case, it won’t be more than a week, week and a half at the max.
Wait, so they don’t even know if they’re mounting a defense at all yet? Is this JAZZ we’ve been listening to? Is Cohen just making this up as he goes along? If so, that’s awesome. Maybe Cohen has found the first true use case for cryptocurrencies: paying for white-collar defense attorneys. Can you imagine how much his hourly rate is? He’s likely charging Bankman-Fried and his family millions for this. And here I was, thinking there was some larger strategy at play, like a rube. Instead, SBF’s defense team seems to be hoping everything works out in the end. Where have I heard that one before?
