| SBF
Super Bowl
Selfie Is
Defense Last
Stand As Judge
Offers Jury
Pizza Party
Crypto Creeps
by
Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book
Substack
LITERARY SDNY,
Nov 1 -- First day of November
and SBF was on the grill. For
hours.
Assistant
US Attorney Nicholas Roos
stood at the platform running
through the crimes now amnesia
of the defendant, who sat
slumped in his chair typing
away at this laptop.
If convicted,
these laptop privileged would
disappear. Type it while you
can, seemed to be the idea.
At one
point the jurors' video
screens broke down and a break
was taken.
Even upon
return, Judge Kaplan told them
not to use the monitor in the
back row, and moved Alternate
Juror Number 1 into the spot
previously occupied by Number
Four, who came in sick one day
then wanted to stay, to stay
on the jury, but got bounced.
Unlike the others
he was now free to reach out
on social media. Or was
he?
When it
was Mark Cohen's turn, the
mood changed, decidedly
winter. He looked straight
down and read out his
statement.
Sam - yes,
personalize it, Sam - was not
a monster. He didn't even play
poker, Cohen insisted, twice
focusing on the photo of SBF
with a deck of cards.
On Cohen's photo
array was the shot of Sam
slumping, even then, with Bill
Clinton and Tony
Blair. Cohen said,
in words or substance,
They try to make
it a crime, to look
uncomfortable with Bill
Clinton. Many had. But that
wasn't the crime: it was using
FTX customers' deposited funds
to pay access to Bill and
Larry David and the people in
the photo at the Super Bowl
party.
Why had Cohen put
that one up, too? Maybe to say
the prosecutors were being
unfair. Trial by selfie (or
now pizza). If so, Sam was
losing
More on this,
including pizza and timing, on
Substack here
More book sample
on Substack here.
Extended on Patreon here.
Book here
***
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