The main issue at play, from what I read in this story [0], is worry he will gum up the trail by saying everything was on the advice of his lawyers. Which would then require hauling the lawyers in and clarifying they of course never told their client to commit fraud or “borrow” billions of dollars of customer money.

>> One decision for Kaplan is whether Bankman-Fried will be allowed to blame FTX lawyers when the jury is back in the courtroom. As we previously wrote, this is called an "advice-of-counsel defense" in which SBF could argue that he sought advice from company lawyers, received advice that his conduct was legal, and "relied on that advice in good faith."

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/sam-bankman-frie...