The Department of Justice and Sam Bankman-Fried's legal teams got to air their grievances with each other's desired witnesses. Criminal defendant and former Fortune Magazine's prospective "next Warren Buffett," Bankman-Fried, took issue with one of the DOJ's witnesses. At the same time, the government feels all of SBF's proposed witnesses are bunk.
It sounds like the witnesses are accounting software engineers and accountants. While the stupid things SBF and his friends were doing with the money have been bewildering, the story sounds like it'll be a boring one of simple financial fraud.
All of FTX founder's Sam Bankman-Fried's proposed witnesses should be disqualified from testifying because their disclosure filings are insufficient, their experience may be misleading or their planned testimony may not be relevant, prosecutors said in a late Monday filing.
Bankman-Fried's team, for their part, wants to exclude a financial analysis expert proposed by the Department of Justice because his proposed testimony may not be allowed under the rules. The filings, part of the so-called Daubert motions due Monday, laid out the two teams' views on why their opposition should not be able to call certain witnesses to the stand when Bankman-Fried goes on trial for fraud and conspiracy charges in a little over a month.
The DOJ moved to discount all seven of the expert witnesses proposed by Bankman-Fried's team, saying that some of the disclosures they filed did not detail their opinions, while others "are inappropriate subjects for expert testimony" or possibly confusing for a potential jury.
