SBF arrived 30 minutes late for the first day of the rest of his life
Day one of Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial on charges of wire fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy was officially scheduled to begin at 9:30am. For unclear reasons, Bankman-Fried arrived, dressed in a court-allowed grey business suit, at 9:55am. The first two orders of business in the courtroom may also have been the most significant news of the day. In statements before Judge Lewis Kaplan, both government prosecutors and Bankman-Fried’s defense team affirmed that he had received no offer of a plea deal from the government. The lack of any plea offer whatsoever explains the biggest mystery of the trial: why there’s a trial at all. Various statements by Bankman-Fried and his parents have made the trio seem borderline delusional in their insistence that Sam is innocent, despite his own executives already having confessed to numerous crimes. But if confessing your guilt gets you little or nothing, why not pretend you’re innocent for as long as you can? The second opening note s...