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The dude masterminded the embezzling and frittering away of billions of dollars, and there is plenty of documentation and testimony from his lieutenants that he knew what he was doing. It's not like some slightly more coherent testimony will prove it was just a wacky misunderstanding.

His only plausible strategy is confusion and delay to buy time. A shame that it ends up burning millions more dollars of prosecutor resources.

The resources spent aren’t wasted. They are setting an example. Think of it as legal framework marketing expense.

slaps hood “These gears turn slowly but watch how fine they grind!” Money well spent imho.

I am glad to have the whole scheme laid out, which wouldn't have happened if he'd just pled guilty.

> he's naive enough that he thinks that will work in court under the eye of the whole media

I mean his publicity tour immediately after FTX went under worked pretty well for a while. He got Kevin O’ Leary to blame CZ in front of congress. And Michael Lewis painted a pretty positive picture. He talked to everyone he could and the vast majority of the media were not sure if he did or did not commit a crime.

All he has to do is convince the jury to have a reasonable doubt.

That Michael Lewis did this still puzzles me.

Me too, since in _The Big Short_ he was so good at untangling a lot of complicated financial machinery to say “this is what was going wrong” in very tangible terms. That he doubts SBF et al actually committed a crime is boggling.

The best explanation I’ve seen is that the book was mostly done when it all came crashing down, and SBF was already the befuddled hero and herald of a new age, and Lewis just didn’t want to rewrite the whole damn thing.

never let the truth get in the way of a good paycheck

It’s the build exploit cycle of trust, Michael Lewis has built up trust that he can now exploit. Though SBF is so far beyond the pale that instead of trusting SBF more I just trust Michael Lewis much less.

In his couric interview he keeps calling SBF a “kid”. He’s a 30 year old man.

But I know Lewis has gone through some personal tragedy, and I think it has softened his gaze, at least upon young people who act like a foundling in Brave New World.

Kevin O'Leary, not so much. :)

It is a jury he needs to convince... Maybe if this technique works in the media and on twitter, it will work against a jury, even if the judge sees right through it.

Is it working in the media for him, though? No.

I'd guess most jury members will have no clue what any of this is about. It'll just sound like big numbers, weird people speaking in jargon, and acronym soup.

If he's convicted it won't be on the details, but on credibility. The "I don't recall" strategy won't fool a judge, but it might fool enough jurors.

I think the prosecution is going to have to work unexpectedly hard to nail him to the wall.

But I also suspect there's more to the story than we're being told.

The fact that so much of the money seems to have gone on bribes and political donations, the fact that his parents are lawyers but apparently were shocked - shocked! - to discover he was doing something illegal, the fact that he seems so casual about the whole thing - it's all a little strange.

His father "is considered a leading scholar in the discipline of tax law" and is a Stanford Professor of Law and Business.

So with no obvious warning signs this must have come as a complete surprise to him.

Stanford is corrupt to its core, so none of this is all that unexpected.

But if the judge thinks he's being unresponsive to the questions, he can be penalized (including possibly jailed) for that.

But ... he's already had his bail revoked and is in jail for the trial.

Being remanded into incarceration in the middle of the trial in the courthouse for contempt of court isn't going to look good to the jury, even if the judge instructs them to disregard it.

Yes, but that doesn't mean he can't get a different and longer punishment for contempt of court -- which would be a charge independent of the ones he's in court to address.

Smart or just aggressive?

Both?

I think he's clearly very smart, but not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.

The "specific source of messaging that's built around 'honesty'" is a classic malignant narcissist behavior. "Oh gosh gee, yes, I did that but you should go easy on me because I'm admitting it - there's no reason to punish me harshly if pretend to be honest now, I've learned my lesson!"