Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey there, it's Michael Lewis. Before we get to
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Speaker 1: an Apple Podcasts or Pushkin dot Fm, Slash Plus. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Judging Sam The Trial of Sam Bankman Freed. I'm
Speaker 1: Michael Lewis. We're through week one and a lot's happened
Speaker 1: so far. The jurors have been picked, the lawyers have
Speaker 1: given their opening statements, and witnesses are taking the stand.
Speaker 1: A lot of those witnesses are people I actually interview
Speaker 1: for my book. It's called Going Infinite, and I've been
Speaker 1: on book tours, so i haven't been in the courtroom
Speaker 1: every day or actually at all. Lydia Jean has, though,
Speaker 1: and I'm thrilled to catch up with you, LJ.
Speaker 2: I'm thrilled to catch up with you too, Michael.
Speaker 1: So we're recording this on Saturday, October seventh. You spent
Speaker 1: the last four days in court. How do you hold
Speaker 1: them up?
Speaker 2: I'm good, Honestly, it's been really fun and great being
Speaker 2: in court.
Speaker 1: Tell me, I want to know what was like just
Speaker 1: getting into the court.
Speaker 2: I mean, I do get there at six am, and
Speaker 2: then I wait for two hours with other reporters, and
Speaker 2: then we go through a security line and then we
Speaker 2: give up our electronics and they count how many electronics
Speaker 2: you have, and they give you like a little poker chip,
Speaker 2: and then you wait in another line, and then the
Speaker 2: marshals take the lucky few and they get to go
Speaker 2: into the courtroom.
Speaker 1: So all I've done. I see in the court room
Speaker 1: are the drawings, and I don't really have any sense
Speaker 1: of the space, like is it really tight and closed
Speaker 1: so you feel like you're close and you can see everything.
Speaker 2: Us comparison is to kind of a small church, because
Speaker 2: we're sitting in pews. The judge is at the front.
Speaker 2: He comes in, he's wearing robes, and we all stand
Speaker 2: up and then we sit down and then the jury
Speaker 2: comes in and they're to the side kind of like
Speaker 2: honestly where the choir would be, and another set of
Speaker 2: pews that are feel like they're raised and when they
Speaker 2: come in, we stand up and we sit down. So
Speaker 2: that part really as a Catholics, someone who was raised Catholic,
Speaker 2: the standing and sitting and not knowing when it's going
Speaker 2: to happen is very reminiscent of that. The court illustrators
Speaker 2: sit in the first or second row and they have
Speaker 2: these boxes of different colored I guess they use like Pastel's.
Speaker 2: I'm not really an artist, and they have like huge canvases.
Speaker 2: One time I got to sit behind them, and it's
Speaker 2: really fun to watch them draw because there's three of them,
Speaker 2: and all of their drawings look a little different, right,
Speaker 2: Like one person will put purple in Sam's hair, another
Speaker 2: one will make it all black. So it's really interesting
Speaker 2: to see like everyone's different representations. But that was one
Speaker 2: special time that I got to sit behind them. Usually
Speaker 2: on that side of the court room where the artists
Speaker 2: are is Sam's family, so his mom and his dad
Speaker 2: is there, and then they have kind of like a
Speaker 2: team of people who are always around them.
Speaker 1: Is there any vantage point where you can see Sam's face.
Speaker 2: Sam's back is to us. So the person whose face
Speaker 2: we can see is kind of the judge, but he's
Speaker 2: often behind a huge monitor. And we can see the
Speaker 2: face of the lawyers when they're doing cross and we
Speaker 2: can see the witnesses face, but they're really far up.
Speaker 1: Can you see the jury's faces?
Speaker 2: I can see some of the jury. So yeah, we're
Speaker 2: all watching to see who's sleeping, who's not a who's taking.
Speaker 1: Notes, sleeping, someone's sleeping.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's always at least one person who's dozing off
Speaker 2: at some point. I mean, there's one juror who actually
Speaker 2: he's an alternate, but he works an overnight shift and
Speaker 2: he didn't speak up earlier, so this guy hasn't slept
Speaker 2: in four days. One thing that could surprise you if
Speaker 2: you're looking down at the courtroom is people doing Crossford
Speaker 2: puzzles during the break the recesses, not during the trial.
Speaker 2: But some journalists bring Crossford puzzles and then everyone works
Speaker 2: together to finish them, because you know, we don't have
Speaker 2: our phones, so we have to entertain ourselves however we can.
Speaker 1: When you are in Sam's position right now, you must
Speaker 1: feel like the pig at the Ham and Egg's breakfast,
Speaker 1: and everybody else is a ticket. Everybody else is sort
Speaker 1: of interested, and you're committed. You know, it's sort of
Speaker 1: like your relationship to this event is so existential and
Speaker 1: of such existential importance, and everybody else's relationship to the
Speaker 1: event is this kind of basic casual interest, with the
Speaker 1: possible exception of your parents. But it's got to be
Speaker 1: so odd to have so much at stake for yourself
Speaker 1: and being surrounded by all these people who are just like,
Speaker 1: not all that invested. They have to write their story,
Speaker 1: they have to render their judgment, they have to proceed
Speaker 1: over the trial. Even the lawyers, they have to do
Speaker 1: their job as lawyers and not embarrass themselves. And it's
Speaker 1: just this play that's going on around you. It's all
Speaker 1: about you, and nobody's feeling anything like the deep dread
Speaker 1: you're feeling.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like that famous painting right the way
Speaker 2: there's a flying from the s guy and everyone else
Speaker 2: is kind of going about their daily life. But do
Speaker 2: you think that Sam is actually feeling?
Speaker 1: But you know, it's funny. I think the way he feels,
Speaker 1: instead of feeling, he calculates, and so that he's sitting
Speaker 1: there updating on information and trying to think, what's the
Speaker 1: next move? Given that, what's the next move? And I
Speaker 1: also if I had to guess whatever thought Sam is
Speaker 1: having his lawyers regard as counterproductive, like I think any
Speaker 1: lawyers that were not family friends would have long ago
Speaker 1: abandoned him, because he just has such a bullheaded, strong
Speaker 1: view of how he should go about doing this, and
Speaker 1: he will seek to impose it on the lawyers, and
Speaker 1: the lawyers have a whole other idea about how to
Speaker 1: do this. So I think he's calculating. I think he's
Speaker 1: sitting there, you know, hearing stuff, Oh that changes this
Speaker 1: that way? What do I do next? Like a board game?
Speaker 2: Do you think that's why his lawyers are so nervous,
Speaker 2: because I've been so perplexed as to why, you know,
Speaker 2: Wondronlla said that one of his lawyers his hands were
Speaker 2: shaking when he was doing and I'm wondering, you know,
Speaker 2: these are really high profile defense lawyers. It seems like
Speaker 2: we shouldn't be able to read their feelings. They must
Speaker 2: have done this many times before, and is it maybe
Speaker 2: because they don't feel fully empowered to mount the sort
Speaker 2: of defense that they would want to have left to
Speaker 2: their own devices.
Speaker 1: That's a very interesting question, and it's probably because normally
Speaker 1: their clients trust them, then they are in questioning their
Speaker 1: every move. So I bet Sam is a big source
Speaker 1: of their sort of uncertainty. I've had a chance to
Speaker 1: glance over these endless transcripts, and what's been odd to
Speaker 1: me is that three of the four people who've testified
Speaker 1: already I interviewed. Two of them are in the book,
Speaker 1: and the two I'm most curious about, in order are
Speaker 1: Gary Wang and Adam You idiot. Let's start with Gary. Gary.
Speaker 1: You know, I had reasons for wanting to see all
Speaker 1: my characters testify, just because I wanted to see how
Speaker 1: they would be in that circumstance. Gary is one of
Speaker 1: the most peculiar because he doesn't speak, or he didn't
Speaker 1: speak like. People would sit next to him for six
Speaker 1: months and not get a word out of him, and
Speaker 1: it was just a running It wasn't even a joke,
Speaker 1: an understanding in their world, in Sam's world that Gary
Speaker 1: didn't speak. I tried to interview him. It took me
Speaker 1: months before I got him in a room alone. And
Speaker 1: it's the only time in my journalistic life I actually
Speaker 1: felt guilty for trying to ask someone question. It created
Speaker 1: such pain that after about ten or fifteen minutes of
Speaker 1: me trying to pull stuff out him, I said, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: let's not do this anymore.
Speaker 2: How could you tell that he was in pain? I'm
Speaker 2: just curious, like, what did he look like when he
Speaker 2: was in pain?
Speaker 1: He was so nervous and uncomfortable. He was monosyllabic when
Speaker 1: he would answer questions. If he managed to get a
Speaker 1: sentence out, he would cut himself off because he didn't
Speaker 1: want to do it anymore. He was perfectly happy with horrible,
Speaker 1: awkward silences. He was clearly not happy to see me,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't me. It was just like it was.
Speaker 1: He didn't like that interaction, and it had always been
Speaker 1: said of him. So I'm just curious how we handle this,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: I was thinking after I saw him, I looked up
Speaker 2: how you described him, and he said he had this clear,
Speaker 2: untroubled face and the smile of an angel, but no words,
Speaker 2: And my experience was the opposite. I saw him walk
Speaker 2: down the aisle and he just looked really pale and
Speaker 2: almost like in a way of shadow. And I asked
Speaker 2: other people what they thought about him, and they were
Speaker 2: just like, he looks really like he just looked not okay.
Speaker 2: There was something about him that just seemed really faded,
Speaker 2: and he had a lot to say. He talked really
Speaker 2: really fast. The judge told him to slow down, the
Speaker 2: prosecutor told him to slow down, and multiple times the
Speaker 2: court reporter, the person who was trying to write down
Speaker 2: what he was saying, told him to slow down.
Speaker 1: He's, of course, maybe the closest thing to Sam's right
Speaker 1: hand man. They were pals in college. Sam was always
Speaker 1: explaining Gary's value to everybody else, and he was the
Speaker 1: one who was responsible for all the code, so he
Speaker 1: has unique insight into whatever happened in the code, and
Speaker 1: what's happening in the code is in some ways the
Speaker 1: story of this trial. What did he say about about that?
Speaker 1: What did he say about his and Sam's interactions and
Speaker 1: what he did in the computer code?
Speaker 2: So to your point about how they were friends, the
Speaker 2: prosecutors showed pictures of Sam and Gary together, and he
Speaker 2: talked about how Alameda had special privileges on FTX. I
Speaker 2: think the quote is, we gave special privileges to Alameda
Speaker 2: research on FTX, which allowed it to withdraw unlimited amounts
Speaker 2: of funds from the platform, and we lied about this
Speaker 2: to the public. And then he explained what the four
Speaker 2: privileges were. I can go through them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that'd be great.
Speaker 2: One Alameda's account was able to go negative. Two Alameda
Speaker 2: had an unlimited line of credit. Three Alameda was able
Speaker 2: to place orders faster than other accounts. And four deposits
Speaker 2: of US dollars went to Alameda accounts.
Speaker 1: So the only one on that list that surprises me
Speaker 1: is three.
Speaker 2: Alameda was able to place orders faster than other accounts.
Speaker 1: The other ones I knew about. But then the question
Speaker 1: was like, why did did they get into why these
Speaker 1: privileges existed.
Speaker 2: He said that he added these privileges to the code
Speaker 2: on Sam's instructions, and then he talked about the effect
Speaker 2: of these privileges, which is that when FTX customers tried
Speaker 2: to withdraw their money, wasn't there. He did talk about
Speaker 2: a conversation that happened in June twenty twenty two with
Speaker 2: Caroline and Gary and Nishad. There had been an accounting
Speaker 2: of how much money Alameda owed FTX. And this was
Speaker 2: the time right when there were lenders to Alameda who
Speaker 2: wanted their money back, and Gary remembered in this meeting,
Speaker 2: Sam telling Caroline that she should return the borrows. So
Speaker 2: return the money to the lenders to Alameda, and Gary
Speaker 2: said that that money that she used to return the
Speaker 2: borrows was FTX customer money.
Speaker 1: Right. Did you have a sense there were times when
Speaker 1: Gary was more was even more uncomfortable than normal, or
Speaker 1: was sort of like a steady performance and you couldn't
Speaker 1: pick up discomfort.
Speaker 2: He was really hard to read, right.
Speaker 1: So Adam, Adam, you DiDia. I mean, this was the
Speaker 1: most amazing drama because you're talking about all of Sam's
Speaker 1: best friends, and you're also talking about a thing that's
Speaker 1: kind of happened once before in Sam Bankminfree's life. You know,
Speaker 1: back in twenty eighteen, he had all of his best
Speaker 1: friend's affective altrus in this hedge fund and it blows
Speaker 1: up in half of them think he's a crooker or
Speaker 1: so catastrophically sloppy. They don't want to be there anymore,
Speaker 1: and they leave and he thinks, like, my whole world's
Speaker 1: just falling apart, and now here we are again. And Adam,
Speaker 1: you DiDia was his his best friend in college. Is
Speaker 1: the way Sam would have described him, Adam, you DiDia,
Speaker 1: you know Hawaii interviewed several times, and his whole thing
Speaker 1: about Sam was, of all the effective Altruss, he's the
Speaker 1: most serious. That's his point. It's like all the rest
Speaker 1: of us all talk the talk, but Sam really walks
Speaker 1: the walk. And it was Adam who turned him into
Speaker 1: a vegan back at MIT. And so, you know, I
Speaker 1: just envy you the privilege of watching this person put
Speaker 1: in this position in relation to his friend. I'm wondering
Speaker 1: what was he like to you and what did he
Speaker 1: have to say.
Speaker 2: I thought Adam seemed very likable and very genuine, and
Speaker 2: it also really came through to me that he loved Sam.
Speaker 2: He recounted even at some point texting Sam when everything
Speaker 2: was starting to fall apart FTX and saying I love you.
Speaker 2: I'm not going anywhere. Also, he seemed very also compared
Speaker 2: to Gary, very vibrant and kind of alive, and.
Speaker 1: Unlike Gary, he was granted immunity. I don't understand why
Speaker 1: Adam would need to be granted immunity.
Speaker 2: He said that he was great immunity because he was
Speaker 2: worried that he unwittingly made changes to a computer code
Speaker 2: that contributed to a crime.
Speaker 1: Well, that's interesting. The technical side of things can be
Speaker 1: so divorced from its consequences that you're not really aware
Speaker 1: of what you're doing. And that's interesting that Adam y
Speaker 1: Didy was in that position inside of FTX.
Speaker 2: But the thing is he talks about knowing Alameda owed
Speaker 2: FTX eight billion dollars, right, and then he talked about
Speaker 2: coming to Sam and saying that eight billion dollars seems
Speaker 2: like a lot of money. Is this going to be okay?
Speaker 2: And Sam said to him, you know, we were a
Speaker 2: bulletproof last year. I'm not sure that we're a bulletproof
Speaker 2: this year. And Adam said, how long until our bulletproof again?
Speaker 2: And Sam said maybe six months, maybe three years. If
Speaker 2: Adam thought that that eight billion dollars was safe, why
Speaker 2: would he be concerned about it? You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, fair question. We'll be right back. Welcome back.
Speaker 2: Has stammered the book.
Speaker 1: The only way for Sam to read the book is
Speaker 1: if they get it on a thumb drive to him
Speaker 1: and give it to him along with his the legal documents.
Speaker 1: And I think they did that either today or maybe
Speaker 1: they did it yesterday. But there wasn't a PDF of
Speaker 1: the book until I don't know, Tuesday the publisher was
Speaker 1: willing to release, so it would only kind of now
Speaker 1: have found its way into the jail. There's a there's
Speaker 1: always a question with Sam and books, is if he
Speaker 1: thinks it's worth his trouble to read the book because
Speaker 1: he doesn't read books. He's foreswore books forever, you know,
Speaker 1: years ago, so they you know, you should reduce it
Speaker 1: to a blog post. But maybe he has time on
Speaker 1: his hands and we'll read it.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, are you going to to
Speaker 2: make him like a special blog post version?
Speaker 1: So no, the idea of a subject of mine reading
Speaker 1: the book is always nerve wracking, Like you always wonder
Speaker 1: how are they going to respond to your portrayal of them?
Speaker 1: In this case, it's really not because I watched Sam
Speaker 1: respond over a year and a half to a gazillion
Speaker 1: portrayals of himself, and he was kind of weirdly disinterested
Speaker 1: in all of them, like he didn't ever expect anybody
Speaker 1: to actually understand him or capture him in any way,
Speaker 1: and if they were rude about him, no matter how rude,
Speaker 1: it was like, eh, whatever, even after it all imploded.
Speaker 1: So I don't expect to get any particular response, and
Speaker 1: I certainly don't expect to get either anger or or
Speaker 1: you missed it or great job, you know, none of that.
Speaker 1: I'll probably hear, Oh yeah, Sam read the book.
Speaker 2: That will kind of be it has this calculating mind.
Speaker 2: So he has no emotional reaction to your book. How
Speaker 2: do you think he's going to calculate what your book.
Speaker 1: Means for him? I bet he concludes what I long
Speaker 1: ago thought when he didn't ask, but friends your drinks
Speaker 1: would ask, what do you think your book's going to do?
Speaker 1: Even before the book's done, And I remember thinking it
Speaker 1: will have no effect whatsoever on the legal judgment, but
Speaker 1: it may have an effect on the social judgment. And
Speaker 1: I would not be surprised if his first reaction is
Speaker 1: it doesn't help me all that much or at all,
Speaker 1: but it may help my parents like that people understanding
Speaker 1: the context of it, understanding the spirit of the family,
Speaker 1: understanding the relationship he had with them a bit. May
Speaker 1: it may give his parents at least a feeling that
Speaker 1: some people understand kind of how it all went down,
Speaker 1: and that changes people's view of them. That's my bet.
Speaker 1: My bet is that that's his first reaction. That's his calculation,
Speaker 1: and I bet he'll say it to them, like, when
Speaker 1: all this is over, the people, you can be able
Speaker 1: to hold your head up on the Stanford campus and
Speaker 1: people won't think your crooks.
Speaker 2: I think, are you worried about anything that could come
Speaker 2: out in court that could change what you wrote or
Speaker 2: how you think about things.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in what might come out of court, which
Speaker 1: come out so far isn't in. You know, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be things that obviously it's gonna additive I could. I
Speaker 1: didn't know everything. I mean, if I had the government's
Speaker 1: power to subpoena Nishad, Caroline and Gary, I'd have had everything.
Speaker 1: But I didn't have that power. I mean, this Casett
Speaker 1: maybe sounds will sound strange to you, but maybe it won't.
Speaker 1: Nothing that's come out really has surprised me at all.
Speaker 1: It does sound like they are pointing out and it's
Speaker 1: pretty clear as true that right from the beginning there
Speaker 1: were these conflicts of interests between Alami and f T.
Speaker 1: Everybody asked this question, I mean, you have one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty venture capitalists and that's this place. They all
Speaker 1: asked the question, and they were all told in general terms. No,
Speaker 1: The thing that you said that surprised me a little
Speaker 1: bit is everybody asked, specifically, does Alami to have the
Speaker 1: right to trade ahead of other people? Like that? Was
Speaker 1: The fear was it's an irony, right. The fear was
Speaker 1: that Sam was replicating in crypto the rigging that exists
Speaker 1: legally in the US financial markets, in the US stock
Speaker 1: market in particular, that he was going to be giving
Speaker 1: high frequency traders, namely himself, the right to see other
Speaker 1: people's trades, to trade ahead of them, all that stuff
Speaker 1: that high frequency traders in the US stock markets buy
Speaker 1: as a privilege and pay money for to the exchanges.
Speaker 1: And if they did that, if they actually did that,
Speaker 1: then that's you know, they really did just lie over
Speaker 1: and over and over because everybody asked that question. The
Speaker 1: Sam Bankman freed in my Imagine Nation and the Fan
Speaker 1: Sam Bekman freed in my book. His form of dishonesty
Speaker 1: is not outright lying. It's not telling you the answer
Speaker 1: to the question that you really need to hear. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like framing your question in a way that
Speaker 1: he wants to answer it and answering that accurately. It's
Speaker 1: a mission is less dishonest.
Speaker 2: Is that less dishonest though he's equally dishonest.
Speaker 1: It is no, No, it's just different. This is no way
Speaker 1: defending him. This is just like describing how it is.
Speaker 1: And you felt like when I was interviewing talking to
Speaker 1: him and I wanted to get it something that he
Speaker 1: might not want to talk about. I felt I was
Speaker 1: playing a game of battleship that you know that you know,
Speaker 1: if you say a four and you hit a four
Speaker 1: and yes, he would say, yes, you hit my battleship.
Speaker 1: But if the battleship's on a four and you say
Speaker 1: a five, he doesn't say, oh, you're you're very near it,
Speaker 1: you know he does. It was cagey and so that
Speaker 1: that's why that surprised me so much, because that would
Speaker 1: not have been caginess. That was been everybody asking that
Speaker 1: exact question and them saying no.
Speaker 2: It was so great talking to you, Michael. I learned
Speaker 2: so much and I can't wait to get to talk
Speaker 2: to you again soon.
Speaker 1: It kills me that you get to see this and
Speaker 1: I don't, so I'll be back with more questions soon.
Speaker 1: This episode of Judging Sam was hosted by me Michael
Speaker 1: Lewis Lydia Gencott is our court reporter. Katherine Gerardeau and
Speaker 1: Nisha Venken produced this show. Sophie Crane is our editor.
Speaker 1: Our music was composed by Matthias Bossi and John Evans
Speaker 1: of stell Wagons. Symphinette. Judging Sam is a production of
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. Got a question or comment for me? There's
Speaker 1: a website for that atr podcast dot com. That's atr
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