A federal judge has sided with the United States Department of Justice in motions aimed at precluding the testimony of 7 witnesses on behalf of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, or SBF.
In a Sept. 21 filing with U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Lewis Kaplan granted in limine motions from prosecutors which would bar certain witnesses from testifying in SBF’s criminal trial. Kaplan provided different legal grounds for granting the DoJ’s motions against certain witnesses, which included the proposed testimony being “not at all clear”, irrelevant to the trial, or would otherwise seemingly obfuscate the facts of the case for the jury.
The witnesses at issue in the criminal case included Thomas Bishop, Brian Kim, Bradley Smith, Lawrence Akka, Joseph Pimbley, Peter Vinella , and Andrew Di Wu, many of whom are professionals in the legal field. Court filings from Aug. 28 suggested that SBF’s legal team could have paid upwards of $1,200 per hour for their testimony.
Kaplan left the door open for SBF’s defense team to call some of the individuals in response to testimony to witnesses for the U.S. government. However, he denied a motion from Bankman-Fried’s lawyers which could have excluded testimony from Peter Easton, a University of Notre Dame accountancy professor, who will speak on FTX customer fiat accounts.
Bankman-Fried is scheduled to appear before Kaplan for his first criminal trial on Oct. 3, where he will face 7 criminal charges related to the alleged misuse of user funds at FTX and Alameda Research. He will face another 5 criminals charges in a March 2024 trial. SBF has pleaded not guilty to all counts.
Since a federal judge revoked his bail in August, SBF has been largely remanded to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn until the start of his trial. On Sept. 21, a three-judge panel denied an appeal from the former FTX CEO’s legal team arguing for early release largely on First Amendment grounds.
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Norman Tebbit, the former Tory minister who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government, has died at the age of 94.
Lord Tebbit died “peacefully at home” late on Monday night, his son William confirmed.
One of Mrs Thatcher’s most loyal cabinet ministers, he was a leading political voice throughout the turbulent 1980s.
He held the posts of employment secretary, trade secretary, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Conservative party chairman before resigning as an MP in 1992 after his wife was left disabled by the Provisional IRA’s bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton.
He considered standing for the Conservative leadership after Mrs Thatcher’s resignation in 1990, but was committed to taking care of his wife.
Image: Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit in 1987 after her election victory. Pic: PA
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch called him an “icon” in British politics and was “one of the leading exponents of the philosophy we now know as Thatcherism”.
“But to many of us it was the stoicism and courage he showed in the face of terrorism, which inspired us as he rebuilt his political career after suffering terrible injuries in the Brighton bomb, and cared selflessly for his wife Margaret, who was gravely disabled in the bombing,” she wrote on X.
“He never buckled under pressure and he never compromised. Our nation has lost one of its very best today and I speak for all the Conservative family and beyond in recognising Lord Tebbit’s enormous intellect and profound sense of duty to his country.
“May he rest in peace.”
Image: Lord Tebbit and his wife Margaret stand outside the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Pic: PA
Tory grandee David Davis told Sky News Lord Tebbit was a “great working class Tory, always ready to challenge establishment conventional wisdom for the bogus nonsense it often was”.
“He was one of Thatcher’s bravest and strongest lieutenants, and a great friend,” Sir David said.
“He had to deal with the agony that the IRA visited on him and his wife, and he did so with characteristic unflinching courage. He was a great man.”
Reform leader Nigel Farage said Lord Tebbit “gave me a lot of help in my early days as an MEP”.
He was “a great man. RIP,” he added.
Image: Lord Tebbit as employment secretary in 1983 with Mrs Thatcher. Pic: PA
Born to working-class parents in north London, he was made a life peer in 1992, where he sat until he retired in 2022.
Lord Tebbit was trade secretary when he was injured in the Provisional IRA’s bombing in Brighton during the Conservative Party conference in 1984.
Five people died in the attack and Lord Tebbit’s wife, Margaret, was left paralysed from the neck down. She died in 2020 at the age of 86.
Before entering politics, his first job, aged 16, was at the Financial Times where he had his first experience of trade unions and vowed to “break the power of the closed shop”.
He then trained as a pilot with the RAF – at one point narrowly escaping from the burning cockpit of a Meteor 8 jet – before becoming the MP for Epping in 1970 then for Chingford in 1974.
Image: Lord Tebbit during an EU debate in the House of Lords in 1997. Pic: PA
As a cabinet minister, he was responsible for legislation that weakened the powers of the trade unions and the closed shop, making him the political embodiment of the Thatcherite ideology that was in full swing.
His tough approach was put to the test when riots erupted in Brixton, south London, against the backdrop of high rates of unemployment and mistrust between the black community and the police.
He was frequently misquoted as having told the unemployed to “get on your bike”, and was often referred to as “Onyerbike” for some time afterwards.
What he actually said was he grew up in the ’30s with an unemployed father who did not riot, “he got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it”.