Speaker 1: Push Kim.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Judging Sam, our podcast about the trial of
Speaker 2: Sam Bankman Freed. We were in the courtroom today October
Speaker 2: the twenty seventh. It was me, Michael Lewis, one of
Speaker 2: your hosts, and Lydia Jean Kott, who's actually kind of
Speaker 2: running the show, and we've just come out.
Speaker 1: So this is a hot take.
Speaker 2: Like, I haven't had a whole lot of time to
Speaker 2: process what happened, but I had random sort of reactions
Speaker 2: to things, and I've tried to kind of order them
Speaker 2: in my head a bit. So l J, here's here's
Speaker 2: the first question I want to ask, if you were
Speaker 2: just to explain to like your mother, the significance of today,
Speaker 2: how would you sort of frame.
Speaker 3: It for So, today it was the first day that
Speaker 3: Sam Bankmin Freed was on the stand that the jury
Speaker 3: was present for, and his defense lawyers to direct examination
Speaker 3: with him, which means that they were able to draw
Speaker 3: out of him his side of the story, and.
Speaker 2: They drew out of the side of the story in
Speaker 2: a way that sort of followed mostly the plot of my.
Speaker 1: Book about it.
Speaker 2: They walked him through his life and took us all
Speaker 2: the way through to kind of almost the crisis. We
Speaker 2: didn't quite get to the crisis. We got to the
Speaker 2: kind of latest, kind of September.
Speaker 4: Of last year exactly.
Speaker 3: And the way they set everything up at the beginning
Speaker 3: is they asked him, did you defraud anyone? Did you
Speaker 3: take anyone's money? And he said no, but he did
Speaker 3: say that he made mistakes, small and large mistakes. And
Speaker 3: then I feel like we got the story of how
Speaker 3: these mistakes happened and what they were, or the beginning
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 2: A lot of it reads like the cliff notes to
Speaker 2: Going Intoite. I mean really, it's just like I feel
Speaker 2: like they're like bouncing along through the book but just
Speaker 2: grabbing like the barest of the details until they get
Speaker 2: to the collapse.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's much more boring.
Speaker 2: Oh well, you know, it's funny you say that, because
Speaker 2: it is. There is this tedium, But it's funny. Everybody
Speaker 2: turns up early in the morning to Gideon, right like
Speaker 2: you O. These reports leaning up at two in the
Speaker 2: morning and three in the morning, so they're full of
Speaker 2: energy and they're full of anticipation that the day is
Speaker 2: going to be so exciting. And then by about ten
Speaker 2: o'clock everybody's yawning and I bet.
Speaker 1: What happens is they walk out of.
Speaker 2: The courthouse exhausted, sort of thinking most of that day
Speaker 2: was boring. But then people tell them, Wow, your tweet
Speaker 2: was good or your story was good because they made
Speaker 2: it more interesting than it was, and you know, rinse
Speaker 2: and repeat every day.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't think that's fair though, because there are real
Speaker 3: moments of excitement.
Speaker 2: True, so true, And it's easier for you to see
Speaker 2: that today you were in the overflow room for all
Speaker 2: of it. I was in the overflow room at the beginning,
Speaker 2: and then after lunch I went into the main courtroom.
Speaker 2: And it's funny. It's like you have a laugh track
Speaker 2: and I don't. So I have to supply my own
Speaker 2: emotional content because nobody's allowed to say anything in the courtroom.
Speaker 2: You can't even allowed to whisper to the person next
Speaker 2: to you, and they're pretty harsh about it. But you
Speaker 2: get to sit in a room with people who are
Speaker 2: laughing and slapping their thighs and doing whatever they.
Speaker 1: Really want to do.
Speaker 3: I just wanted to know what it was like to
Speaker 3: be in the courtroom and watching Sam Bnkman free testify.
Speaker 4: It where his parents looking at.
Speaker 2: Him, His mother takes looks down and takes notes and
Speaker 2: looks at him and nods, and she seems she looks,
Speaker 2: you know, very grim the whole time.
Speaker 1: And she looks frazzled, like she's just stressed beyond belief.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's just not fair what's going on inside the central
Speaker 2: nervous system there. And the dad looks like he is
Speaker 2: paying almost as much attention to the mom as he
Speaker 2: is to Sam. That might be wrong, but that's what
Speaker 2: it looks like to me. And Sam seems completely himself Sam.
Speaker 1: The whole time.
Speaker 2: I've thought this, that Sam is the only one who
Speaker 2: seems like calm about everything. Aside from him seeming like himself.
Speaker 2: I'm struck by how he doesn't look like himself. He
Speaker 2: just looks like, you know, with the short hair and
Speaker 2: having dry some weight and dressed up like mortician.
Speaker 3: And is a jury paying attention very much.
Speaker 2: I couldn't only see their profiles, but the former Solomon
Speaker 2: Brothers guy is paying very close attention.
Speaker 1: The ones I could really.
Speaker 2: See seem very alert, like really watching him. And I
Speaker 2: guess if I was on the jury and I'd been
Speaker 2: hearing about this guy for the past month, I'd be
Speaker 2: paying attention too.
Speaker 1: It's the first time to really hear him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was who heard him for the first
Speaker 2: time today because the jury wasn't there yesterday.
Speaker 3: I thought it was interesting watching them when they file
Speaker 3: in and file out, because the camera you can see
Speaker 3: his face. They all really avoid looking in his direction.
Speaker 3: It seems like they all are looking down when they
Speaker 3: walk past him.
Speaker 1: They don't look at anybody.
Speaker 2: They make a point of not looking at anybody, so
Speaker 2: they're not I've tried to make eye contact, they.
Speaker 1: Won't do it.
Speaker 2: They've been well trained to prevent any kind of information
Speaker 2: coming into them that they're not that the judge does
Speaker 2: not approve of.
Speaker 3: I'm curious what the judge was like in the courtroom
Speaker 3: because in our previous episode, Rebecca Marmolstein, the former SDNY prosecutor,
Speaker 3: said that Sam testifying might really make the judge annoyed.
Speaker 1: It's funny.
Speaker 2: It's a little hard to read the judge's true feelings,
Speaker 2: which I think is intentional probably, But the first thing
Speaker 2: that comes off the judge thick as smoke, is how much.
Speaker 1: He loves being a judge.
Speaker 2: You know, he's just like loving being a judge, and
Speaker 2: he's like playing a judge at the same time, he
Speaker 2: is a judge and he and he likes making people laugh.
Speaker 2: He likes looking over it. If you were wearing spectacles,
Speaker 2: he'd be looking over his spectacles at Sam with concern,
Speaker 2: you know, like this. The thing, whatever he's looking for,
Speaker 2: is the judge to be angry at Sam. And everybody's
Speaker 2: looking for this, because that's become the general thought has
Speaker 2: been the judge hates Sam. The judge has been irritated
Speaker 2: with Sam from the very beginning when he was under
Speaker 2: house arrests. So therefore the judge must be getting even
Speaker 2: more worked up that Sam has had the goal to
Speaker 2: get up on the stand and testify. I think if
Speaker 2: I were just if I didn't know any of the
Speaker 2: story and I didn't know what I was expected to see,
Speaker 2: and I was just looking at this relationship fresh, I
Speaker 2: think the judge enjoys Sam, and the facial expressions are
Speaker 2: not hostile, the mannerisms are not hostile. I wouldn't be
Speaker 2: shocked if the judge is curious about Sam, like it
Speaker 2: hasn't completely made up his mind about Sam.
Speaker 4: That's interesting.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back, welcome back.
Speaker 2: So I'm curious how you felt or what if any
Speaker 2: differences you felt there were between today and yesterday, because
Speaker 2: in some ways it was a continuation of yesterday.
Speaker 3: Yesterday was kind of like a dress rehearsal because Sam
Speaker 3: testified without the jury present in order for the judge
Speaker 3: to decide whether or not to allow certain bits of testimony.
Speaker 3: Today we only had direct and yesterday did really well
Speaker 3: on direct he seemed very much himself and very reasonable,
Speaker 3: And this time today on direct I would say he
Speaker 3: did very well again and seemed very much himself un reasonable.
Speaker 3: I felt like his lawyers were drawing out things that
Speaker 3: did that really made me think differently about the picture
Speaker 3: that the prosecution had been painting. And they showed, for instance,
Speaker 3: that picture of Sam makman Freed holding a deck of
Speaker 3: cards and they said do you even play cards? And
Speaker 3: Sam said no, I'm just really fidgety, and they said
Speaker 3: have you ever even been to a casino? And they
Speaker 3: stopped that on direct. But I felt like that picture,
Speaker 3: in that back and forth, really showed how the prosecution
Speaker 3: had been showing us one version of Sam, which is
Speaker 3: that he's this villainous character with a deck of cards plotting,
Speaker 3: and then there was the real Sam on the stand,
Speaker 3: who's this reasonable sounding guy who's.
Speaker 4: Very good at explaining things.
Speaker 3: And is a little fidgety and is a bit nerdy,
Speaker 3: and didn't really seem to have any sort of undercovered
Speaker 3: nefarious plot, and in fact talks so much and it's
Speaker 3: trying to explain things so much that he's constantly getting
Speaker 3: in trouble with it.
Speaker 4: From the judge.
Speaker 2: Today, he didn't get in as much trouble as he
Speaker 2: got yesterday.
Speaker 3: Though not as nothing, but still a little bit more
Speaker 3: than other witnesses.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 2: The bigger point is the judge is sitting there listening
Speaker 2: to see if Sam is actually answering.
Speaker 4: The question because he knows he doesn't do that yet.
Speaker 2: Or generating a word salad for us all to consume.
Speaker 2: And I was thinking about this again to day. Why
Speaker 2: Sam's word salads are so fun, like why he gets
Speaker 2: away with it Like most people when they don't answer
Speaker 2: a question, your alarm bells go off pretty quickly, like
Speaker 2: that you just redirected in some way. He's really really
Speaker 2: good at starting the answer in a place where you think, oh,
Speaker 2: that's where the beginning of the answer belongs, and then
Speaker 2: making a little jump into things are actually interesting to
Speaker 2: know about, so you're not bored, You're actually interested in
Speaker 2: what he's saying.
Speaker 3: You're saying like there's substance to it. He's not just
Speaker 3: saying nothing. He's saying something that's substantive and makes you
Speaker 3: think it's just not what you asked. But then you're
Speaker 3: thinking and you forget what you asked.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what happens. It's engaging. It's like, maybe it's
Speaker 2: even better than the answer to the question.
Speaker 4: Right, Maybe it's what you should.
Speaker 1: Have as you should have asked. That's exactly right.
Speaker 3: And then to me, it kind of felt like that
Speaker 3: movie Raschamon, because it was three scenes that the prosecutors
Speaker 3: had painted on direct right with Caroline Allison in the
Speaker 3: balance sheets, and they showed the seven balance sheets that
Speaker 3: Caroline had apparently made for him that then he looked at,
Speaker 3: and then he, according to Caroline, chose the one that
Speaker 3: looked best and was misleading to send to investors. But
Speaker 3: according to Sam akmun Freed, it kind of sounded like
Speaker 3: he just looked at the first one that was highlighted,
Speaker 3: basically and said this slicks fy, and send this on.
Speaker 2: He made it seem like he didn't pay a whole
Speaker 2: lot of attention to it.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Speaker 2: He didn't actually say I didn't look at all, so
Speaker 2: he didn't.
Speaker 3: I think the lawyer said, do you remember talking about
Speaker 3: each of these tabs and he said no.
Speaker 4: Right, then we have the.
Speaker 3: Other story was the bulletproof conversation between him and Adam
Speaker 3: you DiDia that happened on the.
Speaker 4: Paddle ball court. Is it is it paddle on.
Speaker 3: The paddle tennis court on this paddle tennis court, which
Speaker 3: sounds like a rich person sport that I don't know about.
Speaker 3: And they have this conversation that sounds kind of nefarious
Speaker 3: where Adam tells him about how there's these billions of
Speaker 3: dollars missing that Alameda took from FTX and he asks
Speaker 3: Sam mcmunfreed to respond to that, and Sam Bankman Freed says,
Speaker 3: we used to be bulletproof, but we're not anymore. And
Speaker 3: it sounds like just this very damning story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that conversation occurred supposedly in June. I think I
Speaker 2: sat down and had a very long interview with Adam
Speaker 2: yu DiDia July August, and if Adam you DiDio was
Speaker 2: so disturbed in June by this encounter on the paddle
Speaker 2: town's court and thinks these in the middle of a fraud.
Speaker 2: The last thing I'm going to do is sit down
Speaker 2: with me and have this kind of conversation I would
Speaker 2: have fought before. We get to a couple of substantive
Speaker 2: things that sort of struck me. And on a related note,
Speaker 2: I am still again now that I'm watching this process
Speaker 2: up close, the structure of our system of justice. They're
Speaker 2: just the basic some of the basics assumptions about it
Speaker 2: is just to me.
Speaker 1: Bizarre.
Speaker 2: In addition to plea agreements, we haven't gotten an answer
Speaker 2: yet from I've asked now several lawyers, like serious lawyers,
Speaker 2: in the last forty eight hours, what's the history of
Speaker 2: the Pleague agreement?
Speaker 1: Like why do we have it?
Speaker 2: The englishing around London, people were saying that I can't
Speaker 2: believe these people are allowed to do this. Nobody's really
Speaker 2: had an answer. It's just woven into the fabric of
Speaker 2: our legal culture. And I'm just looking at it like
Speaker 2: as for the first time and just kind of shocked
Speaker 2: by it and interested by it. Last point, because I
Speaker 2: don't want to be a downer about our legal system.
Speaker 2: This court house is so beautifully run. It's just like
Speaker 2: amazingly run, and it's the federal government. I would tip
Speaker 2: the cat to whoever manages those courthouses down in the
Speaker 2: southern Manhattan. They're so awful and boring to look out
Speaker 2: from the outside. It's like you never there's nothing about
Speaker 2: them that beckons you inside. But once you're inside, you're
Speaker 2: treated so well by like the people who frisk you
Speaker 2: to go in. The guy I even got the guy's name,
Speaker 2: David Carrera, who runs the restaurant.
Speaker 1: It's like, why is the food so good here? Doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be good here? And they're so nice.
Speaker 2: They kind of make a point of like coming over
Speaker 2: and saying hi, and how you doing that. I was
Speaker 2: asking the woman at the cash register, like who runs
Speaker 2: this place? She says, my dad, you know, And it's
Speaker 2: like it's so cute. The people that seem to be
Speaker 2: really energized by their jobs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's true because they, you know, there's
Speaker 3: such important cases there. And also marshalls are retired police
Speaker 3: officers a lot of time who now have a much
Speaker 3: easier job. I think that's and get paid a fair amount.
Speaker 2: You've been in the main courtroom some right, I mean,
Speaker 2: like the judge has this very weird tapestry.
Speaker 3: Behind Oh yeah, I've been wondering about that tapestry. It's
Speaker 3: kind of like blue and purplish, and it kind of
Speaker 3: seemed like it seems like a bad idea. It seems
Speaker 3: like someone was like, I'll make something for the courtroom,
Speaker 3: and this person was like, Okay, make it, and then
Speaker 3: they had to put it up. But it doesn't really
Speaker 3: fit in with what the rest of the courtroom looks
Speaker 3: like at all.
Speaker 2: So I heard tell that it's the creation of the
Speaker 2: wife of the former judge who had that corporate It
Speaker 2: has that feeling, it feel, it has the feeling of
Speaker 2: the work of art someone gave you that they created
Speaker 2: and they gave it to you as a Christmas present,
Speaker 2: and you're stuck having to put it up on your
Speaker 2: wall because they go visit every four months and if
Speaker 2: it's not on your wall, you're in I found out
Speaker 2: about it today. I was asking one of the marshals.
Speaker 1: It covers a bulletproof.
Speaker 2: Pane of glass that's behind the judge, because that's a
Speaker 2: little unsightly. And the reason there's a bulletproof pane of
Speaker 2: glass behind the judge is that they fortified that room
Speaker 2: more than any of the other courtrooms in the building
Speaker 2: against attack. It's bomb proof. All the window.
Speaker 1: Is bulletproof, and it was because it.
Speaker 2: Was designed for whatever the cases were that came out
Speaker 2: of the World Trade Center bombings. And it's actually where
Speaker 2: they it's the very room where they had where Trump
Speaker 2: and the e Gen Carroll trial was. And actually, lastly,
Speaker 2: one of the things the interesting things they told me
Speaker 2: was the guy who worked there for a long time
Speaker 2: said he's never seen such public interest in the trial.
Speaker 1: So here's a question for you.
Speaker 2: Because I just My answer is, I just spent two
Speaker 2: years writing a book about it.
Speaker 1: But why do you think.
Speaker 2: So many people are so interested in Sam Bangman free.
Speaker 2: He hasn't come and gone like most cultural phenomenon. He's
Speaker 2: been in the news for a long time that's been
Speaker 2: surprisingly interested in it. I mean, look, there are hundreds
Speaker 2: some journalists floating around that place. What do you think
Speaker 2: is going on there?
Speaker 3: I think there's so many layers of the story that
Speaker 3: are fascinating.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: There's the one layer of Sam said he wanted to
Speaker 3: make the world a better place and then he failed
Speaker 3: so spectacularly. It's much more interesting than someone who is
Speaker 3: just bad from the beginning. I think the second layer
Speaker 3: is there's so much money. When there's a lot of money,
Speaker 3: that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think another layer is it's his closest friends and
Speaker 3: his ex girlfriend. It's so interesting to watch people's relationships
Speaker 3: play out also, and to watch a play out kind
Speaker 3: of on a public stage. And to me, for instance,
Speaker 3: even the balance sheet that had kind of couple's therapy
Speaker 3: energy to me, like it felt to me reminded me
Speaker 3: of purple therapy, where one person sees something one way
Speaker 3: and then the other person sees something completely differently and
Speaker 3: there are some overlapping facts. But the take at the
Speaker 3: same time I have felt, you know, it's like, were
Speaker 3: you guys both there, were you talking to each other?
Speaker 4: How is there this huge misunderstanding?
Speaker 2: Well, they were at war with each other. She booted
Speaker 2: him out of the Orchid penthouse.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The third big moment that was recast was Nashad's conversation
Speaker 3: with sam Akmon Freed on the balcony, which was you know,
Speaker 3: dramatic woman in the trial with the picture of the
Speaker 3: balcony and then the way sam Mgmunfried told the stories.
Speaker 3: That conversation was hardly even really about the missing funds
Speaker 3: at all. It was really just a conversation about marketing,
Speaker 3: and Nishad was a little bit worried about Alameda's liabilities,
Speaker 3: but was worried also that ftexas spending too much money
Speaker 3: in marketing, and Sam said, maybe you have a point.
Speaker 3: Why don't you research the marketing and get back to
Speaker 3: me about it.
Speaker 1: So you know, only two people know the truth of this.
Speaker 2: But one thing that is true is that the spring
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty two, when Ryan Salem moves basically moves
Speaker 2: out of the company, he becomes much less interested in
Speaker 2: being involved, and Nishad and Nishad's girlfriend basically took over
Speaker 2: the role that Ryan had and Ryan had been really
Speaker 2: the department is spending money. I mean, it was unbelievable
Speaker 2: how Ryan spent money. And it drove Nashad crazy. Uh
Speaker 2: and he was even well before there were obvious problems.
Speaker 2: Nishad was like, we got to stop this. This is
Speaker 2: just crazy. Because Nishad was thinking like effective altruism, these
Speaker 2: dollars could be going to this other thing. And I
Speaker 2: think Sam's mind was that these are all rounding eras.
Speaker 2: We're aiming for a trillion. Anything that slows us down
Speaker 2: is dumb. And and if we buy these fancy apartments
Speaker 2: and enables us to get smarter people to come move
Speaker 2: to the Bahamas and work for us, and the apartments
Speaker 2: will hold their value.
Speaker 1: Like it's this is no big deal.
Speaker 2: You're looking at two people having very radically different accounts of.
Speaker 4: And three people too. It's like three different stories.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: Two random thoughts, like not ordered thoughts. One was that
Speaker 2: it's kind of interesting that Sam's effective altruist passion had
Speaker 2: him focused on pandemic prevention. At least three of the
Speaker 2: members of the jury are wearing masks, so we have
Speaker 2: a germaphobic jury and by this and Sam's, Sam's has
Speaker 2: an interest in pandemic prevention, and I just wonder that
Speaker 2: was the first thought was like, hmm, I wonder if
Speaker 2: they're the germophobes, you're going to form a little you
Speaker 2: know what, let that guy loose.
Speaker 3: If the defense lawyers were thinking about that when they
Speaker 3: were choosing who they wanted on the jury, that's a.
Speaker 2: Who knows right, I'll argue at some point we stick
Speaker 2: a pin in that and we'll last We'll be back
Speaker 2: in a minute with one last thing, welcome back. I
Speaker 2: did the unseemly thing of running out of the courtroom
Speaker 2: moments before they said we were done for the day,
Speaker 2: because I smelled it and I wanted to beat everybody
Speaker 2: of the elevators and get my phone first, so I missed, like,
Speaker 2: what's coming next? That section that they do at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, what's coming next? What can we
Speaker 2: expect next week?
Speaker 3: Okay, direct, we'll finish, and then there's going to be
Speaker 3: cross examination, which is what all the reporters are excited about,
Speaker 3: because that's going to be the more pugnacious part of
Speaker 3: Sam's testimony, and the prosecutors said that the judge should
Speaker 3: anticipate quote significant cross examination.
Speaker 1: Sounds unpleasant.
Speaker 3: It sounds unpleasant, except I personally love watching the prosecutor
Speaker 3: doing her work because she is so good and so precise,
Speaker 3: and there's just something really satisfying to me about watching
Speaker 3: someone who is very good at what they do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, someone needs to profile Danielle so soon.
Speaker 1: There's a story there. Al Jay, it's been.
Speaker 2: A total guest hanging with you in the last two days,
Speaker 2: and I get to hang with you in another.
Speaker 1: Two days at least next week. But let's say.
Speaker 4: Goodbye now, see you on Monday.
Speaker 2: By bye, We'll be back in your feed next week.
Speaker 2: With more expert analysis and news from Sambangmanfreed's trial.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: This episode of Judging Sam was hosted by Me, Michael Lewis,
Speaker 2: Lydia Gencott is our court reporter. Katherine Girardeau and Nisha
Speaker 2: Venken produced this show. Sophie Crane is our editor. Our
Speaker 2: music was composed by Matthias Bossi and John Evans of
Speaker 2: stell Wagons Symphonet. Judging Sam is a production of Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 2: Got a question or comment for me? There's a website
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