SBF Gets a Weird Do-Over

Plus, Hippo announces more layoffs.

Number of the Week: $130 billion (explanation below)

SBF Gets a Weird Do-Over

The FTX trial reached bizarre new heights this week, as founder Sam Bankman-Fried took the witness stand, first without jurors and then in front of them. Judge Lewis Kaplan made the unusual choice to have Bankman-Fried testify without the jury, apparently to figure out what parts of the former CEO’s testimony he wanted to keep jurors from hearing. Some of this involves the much-discussed “advice of counsel” defense, with the judge mostly dismissive of the idea that Bankman-Fried can tell the jury that whatever “mistakes” FTX made—which the Justice Department calls massive fraud and money laundering—were approved by the company’s lawyers.

But Kaplan’s tactic had the strange effect of giving Bankman-Fried a chance to polish his initial performance, which by all accounts was dreadful. Journalists at the trial used terms like “stumbling,” “evasive” and “forgetful.”