Sam Bankman-Fried Denies US Witness Tampering Claim

FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyer insisted Saturday his client didn’t seek to influence a witness in the US government’s fraud case against him, accusing prosecutors of trying to portray him “in the worst possible light.”

Mark Cohen, a lawyer for Bankman-Fried, asked the federal judge presiding over the case to allow his client to meet some people involved in FTX, saying his client needs to participate in his defense. Cohen says Bankman-Fried’s use of Signal to reach out to the current general counsel of FTX US, who is a witness, was “merely an innocuous attempt to offer assistance in FTX’s bankruptcy process and does not reflect misconduct that warrants the restriction the Government proposes here.”