
Sam Bankman-Fried's defense team wants to question Caroline Ellison about the extent to which she relied on legal counsel to make certain decisions while CEO of Alameda Research and valuation of FTX's stake in Anthropic AI.
In a pair of filings Tuesday night, shortly after Ellison ended her first day of testimony, attorneys made a set of motions asking the authority to address these issues, noting that Judge Lewis Kaplan has previously asked for advance notification should the defense want to raise the 'advice-of-counsel' argument.
Alameda, a crypto hedge fund founded by Bankman-Fried with close ties to his now-bankrupt FTX crypto exchange, was run by Ellison. She is his former paramour and the star witness in the case of the crime fraud against him. On Tuesday, she testified that she was consulted on FTX's investment portfolio.
In a filing with the U.S. District Court for New York, the defense said it wants to question Ellison about her knowledge of whatever role FTX and Alameda lawyers might have played in setting policies, such as activating auto-deletion tools on the messaging app Signal.
The Department of Justice has already asked the judge to block Bankman-Fried's defense team from raising the topic of current valuation of FTX investments, reiterating this opposition in a filing this week addressing Anthropic AI specifically and said it was immaterial to the question of whether Bankman-Fried misappropriated FTX customer funds for personal use. The artificial intelligence firm has announced several fundraising efforts, raising hopes that FTX creditors may receive a larger payment if the bankrupt exchange sells its stake in the AI firm.
Bankman-Fried's lawyers argued that the Anthropic news reflected 'important context' about FTX's expected value analysis, and they should be able to ask broader questions about FTX's portfolio.
At the end of the session Tuesday, the attorneys and Judge Lewis Kaplan went back and forth over the question of whether these issues should be raised during the trial.
He did not want to allow any witness that would be giving cumulative testimony - meaning testimony that's just reinforcing other witnesses' - and said without making a ruling one way or another, that the prosecutors 'better consider alternatives.