Sam Bankman-Fried drops new trial bid: ‘Fair hearing unlikely’

Former FTX exchange CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), has withdrawn his motion for a new trial. 

According to a court filing, SBF said he may not receive a fair hearing under U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw his initial trial.

Because I do not believe I will get a fair hearing on this topic in front of you, I am now requesting to withdraw the Rule 33 motion, without prejudice to renewing it after my direct appeal and the related request for reassignment have been ruled upon.

But as stated by SBF, he is just pausing the motion for now until his appeal and request for a new judge are determined. 

SBF was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 25 years in 2024. His close executives at the defunct crypto exchange were also charged. 

Sam Bankman-Fried’s appeal continues

However, he appealed the fraud conviction in November 2025, citing judicial bias, politicization, and restriction from offering new defense evidence. 

Lately, SBF has reinforced that FTX was fairly solvent to cover its obligations. In fact, he has doubled down on the solvency argument.

According to him, FTX didn’t have a ‘multi-billion dollar’ hole that could never be filled, as initially claimed by prosecutors. 

If that were the case, SBF noted, then it would not have been able to recover over $16 billion that has been distributed to the victims. 

Interestingly, some of the exchange’s early stake in Solana, SpaceX, Cursor, Robinhood, Anthropic, and Genesis Digital could be worth over $114 billion based on current market prices.

Before going the appeal route, the former FTX CEO cozied up to U.S. President Donald Trump for a pardon.

His framing? They were both targets of politicized charges by the Democrat-led justice system, which was hard on crypto at that time. 

The Trump camp has seen biased judges in terms of prosecutorial abuse and politicization of the DoJ over the last decade, and speeding up recently. My trial is part of the picture.

So far, the pardon he sought has not materialized. 

Fast forward to February 2026, SBF opted for a whole new trial to re-do his fraud case, highly convinced that his 2024 conviction was flawed. This is the push he has now paused as he waits for the outcome of the appeal ruling, which is currently under review by a three-judge bench. 

Final Summary

• SBF has paused his push for a new trial on the FTX fraud conviction case, citing a likely unfair hearing from Judge Lewis Kaplan.
• His next move will be determined by the appeal ruling and whether Judge Kaplan is removed from his case.