Sam Bankman-Fried, the former FTX founder currently serving a 25-year federal prison sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Lompoc, California, has withdrawn his Rule 33 motion for a new trial in a letter addressed to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York, stating that he does not expect to receive a fair hearing from the presiding judge.
The withdrawal, filed without prejudice, preserves Bankman-Fried’s right to refile after his direct appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has concluded and any pending judicial reassignment request has been resolved.
Ex-FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried Withdraws Retrial Motion, Seeks New Judge.
Despite this, his broader legal challenges remain active as he continues to pursue an appeal against his conviction and sentence.
According to filings submitted to the US District Court for the Southern… pic.twitter.com/3qR3dOosFt
— TheCryptoBasic (@thecryptobasic) April 23, 2026
We suspect this is a calculated procedural retreat rather than any substantive concession on the underlying merits.
By stepping back from the Rule 33 motion now, Bankman-Fried’s legal strategy appears designed to avoid an adverse ruling from a judge his team has formally accused of demonstrated bias – a ruling that could carry precedential weight against future filings, while consolidating appellate resources around the Second Circuit review, where the procedural posture is meaningfully more favorable.
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Sam Bankman Rule 33 Withdrawal and the Judicial Recusal Mechanism: How the Procedural Architecture Functions
The mechanism functions as follows: A Rule 33 motion, filed under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, allows a convicted defendant to seek a new trial on the basis of newly discovered evidence or in the interest of justice. Bankman-Fried’s motion was originally filed in March 2026 by his mother, Barbara Fried, an attorney acting on his behalf while he was incarcerated at a Brooklyn facility prior to his transfer to Lompoc.
Bankman-Fried subsequently claimed in an April 2026 filing that he had independently conceived, researched, and drafted multiple versions of the motion himself, a characterization that prosecutors formally contested.
Judge Kaplan had ordered Bankman-Fried to clarify the authorship question, specifically, whether the filing was genuinely self-authored, given that Bankman-Fried was technically proceeding pro se, meaning without retained counsel, before the court would entertain the motion’s merits.
Bankman-Fried stated in his withdrawal letter that responding to Judge Kaplan’s authorship inquiries had consumed time and resources that would otherwise have been directed toward rebutting the government’s substantive opposition to the new trial motion, a procedural bind that he characterized as effectively preventing meaningful preparation.
Separately, Bankman-Fried’s legal team filed a formal motion for judicial recusal in February 2026, alleging that Judge Kaplan had exhibited extreme bias throughout the trial proceedings. That recusal request remains pending before the Second Circuit alongside the direct appeal. A successful recusal would, in principle, reset the procedural landscape for any future Rule 33 filing by transferring the matter to a new district court judge – a circumstance that likely underlies the strategic logic of the current withdrawal.
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Daniel Frances is a technical writer and Web3 educator specializing in macroeconomics and DeFi mechanics. A crypto native since 2017, Daniel leverages his background in on-chain analytics to author evidence-based reports and deep-dive guides. He holds certifications from The Blockchain Council, and is dedicated to providing “information gain” that cuts through market hype to find real-world blockchain utility.