Sam Bankman-Fried Deviated From the Planned Defense Strategy: SBF’s Lawyer

• Defense attorney David Mills labeled Bankman-Fried’s cross-examination as the most challenging he had ever seen.
• The FTX founder reportedly deviated from the planned legal strategy during his testimony.
• Mills acknowledged that even with a better performance by SBF, the jury might still have found him guilty.

In the legal defense of Sam Bankman-Fried, attorney David Mills asserted that the founder of FTX exhibited the most challenging cross-examination performance he had ever witnessed.

Bloomberg reported that Bankman-Fried “went off-script when he took the stand” and deviated from the lawyers’ planned strategy while testifying, particularly in the manner of answering the prosecutors during cross-examination.

Despite Mills acknowledging that a better performance by SBF may not have altered the jury’s guilty verdict, he pointed out that pre-trial rulings by the judge and the powerful testimony from prosecution witnesses made the case “practically unwinnable for the defense.”

Mills, a professor at Stanford Law School, confirmed that he would not be involved in any appeal for FTX’s founder, emphasizing that his initial strategy aimed to convince the jury that the Bankman-Fried’s actions were part of a sincere effort to save FTX.

Defending the fallen crypto exchange founder proved challenging for Mills due to the impactful testimony of three prosecution witnesses. Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, FTX Co-Founder Gary Wang, and Engineering Chief Nishad Singh all testified that SBF directed them to commit fraud.

Mills expressed the formidable challenge of contesting a case when multiple founders align to accuse an individual, even if their credibility is in question. He stated, “Even if they’re all lying through their teeth, it’s really, really hard to win a case like that.”  

Furthermore, Mills highlighted Bankman-Fried’s repeated claims of not remembering certain statements, which he believed made his client appear evasive. Mills concluded, “You’ve got five people who say one thing; one person says another thing. Well, you’ve got no shot—zero.”