The SBF defense team wants SBF to testify that its lawyers were involved in part of FTX’s operations

Sam Bankman-Fried's defense team wants him to testify about whether lawyers were involved in FTX's operations, his understanding of industry practices, the intentions of FTX's funds when his empire collapsed, and his knowledge of FTX and Alameda's finances. A defense filing on Wednesday asked the judge overseeing the case, Lewis Kaplan, to allow defense attorneys to question Bankman-Fried about certain aspects of FTX’s operations and how the company’s lawyers were involved in making those decisions. These include FTX's use of automatic deletion policies for Signal and Slack messages, the opening of North Dimension and its bank accounts, loans provided by FTX and Alameda Research to its executives, and other issues. The Justice Department sought to argue that some or all of those questions were evidence of criminal intent, the document said. The defense tried to argue that SBF did not intend to defraud customers or investors and that he relied in part on the advice of lawyers in his efforts to run the company. While the judge blocked most of the "legal advice" argument, he allowed the defense team to present a limited version with permission applied for by attorney Mark Cohen. (CoinDesk)