SBF's team of lawyers will argue at an appeal trial that it was "presumed guilty" after the FTX crash

On November 4th, according to Bloomberg News, when FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried asked the appeals court on Tuesday to overturn his fraud conviction and 25-year prison sentence, his lawyer said that after the cryptocurrency exchange crash in 2022, the news media, prosecutors and others all wanted to take him down, and Judge Lewis Kaplan hastily convicted him, saying SBF "was presumed guilty even before he was indicted." In the appeal brief, lawyers focused on 80-year-old Judge Kaplan, accusing him of "repeatedly favoring the government and obstructing the defense," asking for a retrial and a change of judge. The SBF team argued that the judge continued to ridicule SBF and question his testimony by suggesting jurors could work overtime, provide free dinners and send-home services. SBF, who is serving his sentence in California, is not expected to attend the hearing.
In addition, SBF's parents have been exploring ways to obtain a pardon from US President Donald Trump, a person familiar with the matter revealed earlier this year. On Tuesday, lawyer Shapiro was also expected to argue that the judge wrongly prevented SBF from telling the jury that FTX was solvent, but allowed prosecutors to accuse it of stealing money and causing bankruptcy. The SBF team stressed that he had no intention of deceiving the client, and that the judge should have allowed him to testify that he had been acting on the advice of FTX's lawyers.