<\/p>\n
After yesterday\u2019s mock hearing, Judge Kaplan decided to only allow several parts of Bankman-Fried\u2019s defense case to actually be heard by the jury.<\/p>\n
This is great news for the jury\u2019s ears.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While Bankman-Fried sounded poised and professional under direct questioning by his own lawyer, cross-examination yielded a veritable word salad. And a very high-level word salad for someone who claims<\/a> to never read books:\u00a0<\/p>\n For example, Bankman-Fried managed to use the word \u201ccontemporaneously\u201d no less than six times. That would get him roughly 26 points in Scrabble.<\/p>\n Besides the fact that Bankman-Fried has clearly made use of a thesaurus in jail, the rest of his long-awaited first go at sitting behind the witness stand left all of us subject to yesterday\u2019s trial run with a bad taste in our mouths. Bankman-Fried is famous for loving to talk to the media<\/a>, but nothing about his answers to the hard questions yesterday were in any way quotable \u2014\u00a0or even coherent.<\/p>\n I took a rough count of how many times Bankman-Fried professed to have no knowledge of what the prosecutor was asking him on the stand. In about three hours of testimony, Bankman-Fried said \u201cI don\u2019t recall\u201d thirty-four times, \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d thirty-three times, \u201cI\u2019m not aware\u201d six times and \u201cI\u2019m not sure\u201d a total of thirty-nine times.<\/p>\n What was Bankman-Fried so unaware of? The dates he had certain conversations, whether or not he saw certain documents, which lawyers he consulted with on certain matters and even the title of Alameda\u2019s general counsel. It\u2019s a lot to forget.<\/p>\n And Bankman-Fried\u2019s peculiar way of speaking yesterday \u2014\u00a0what the judge kindly referred<\/a> to as an \u201cinteresting way of responding to questions\u201d \u2014 meant that he really didn\u2019t answer almost a single question at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n The most obvious instance was when the prosecution wanted to pin down whether or not Bankman-Fried was aware of the Alameda\u2019s special privileges that allowed the firm to go negative (an allegation which had been pretty soundly proved, in my opinion, in previous testimony<\/a>).\u00a0<\/p>\n Bankman-Fried first needed to understand what it meant to go negative. Did the prosecutor mean negative in a \u201cparticular asset?\u201d No, the prosecutor said, just whether Bankman-Fried knew that Alameda could have an \u201coverall negative balance on FTX.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n That wasn\u2019t clear enough for Bankman-Fried. Did the prosecutor mean a \u201cnegative balance, a negative net asset value, or [\u2026] a negative balance in a particular asset?\u201d<\/p>\n The prosecutor reiterated: \u201cAn overall negative balance.\u201d<\/p>\n Bankman-Fried responded: \u201cYou\u2019re talking about negative in a particular coin or just have a negative net asset value?\u201d<\/p>\n The prosecutor responded: \u201cJust have a negative balance.\u201d<\/p>\n This exchange encompassed 15 pages of testimony in the transcript, and ended with the prosecutor exasperatedly saying, \u201cI am going to move on\u201d \u2014 without Bankman-Fried ever answering the question.<\/p>\n Anyone in the courtroom again today can breathe a sigh of relief that they won\u2019t have to listen to a repeat of whatever that was, as the judge has ruled<\/a> that this particular section of yesterday\u2019s testimony will not be heard in front of a jury.\u00a0<\/p>\n But if the way that Bankman-Fried handled himself under cross-examination yesterday is any indication of how he will respond during his real testimony, I worry it will sorely test the jurors\u2019 attention spans.<\/p>\n