On August 28, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a motion to bar all seven of Sam “SBF” Bankman-Freed’s expert witnesses from testifying in court.
In the motion, the Justice Department argues that Bankman-Freed’s proposed expert witnesses and their corroborating testimony “suffer from a number of shortcomings” that the Department says justify their exclusion from the trial.
The Prosecutor further stated that some of the allegations “are not true at the most basic level” in are expert opinions and most of them do not provide a basis for conclusionsas required by Rule 16 of the Federal Criminal Procedure.
“When an attorney discloses expert opinions, they are not suitable for expert testimony, lack a sound methodology or basis of facts and data, or are inappropriate, unfairly biased, and confusing to jurors.”
In addition, the department argues that the proposed legal opinions of experts would violate the jurisdiction of the court and the jury. The Justice Department then urged the court to use its “supervisory powers” to prevent such expert testimony.
Currently, the seven alleged witnesses are Lawrence Akka, Thomas Bishop, Brian Kim, Joseph Pimbley, Bradley Smith, Peter Vinella and Andrew Dee Wu, all professional lawyers.
Related: US Department of Justice fears seizure of Binance banks if prosecutors file fraud allegations
On August 25, the Justice Department received a new set of evidence against him, including another four million pages of documents, according to Bankman-Freed’s lawyers.
This material was published less than six weeks before the October 3 trial..
On Aug. 8, a Justice Department attorney said he plans to file seven charges against Bankman-Fried at an upcoming October trial. These included his alleged illegal campaign finance scheme as evidence in court for wire fraud charges.
SBF lawyers are currently pushing for a temporary release from the detention center, arguing that the proposed “extraordinary conditions” insufficient to prepare for the upcoming criminal trial after the release of millions of documents by the Department of Justice.
Translation by Walter Rizzo