Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyer fails to hurt credibility of the government’s star witness at fraud trial

Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyer did little to dent the credibility of the government’s key witness in the former crypto mogul’s fraud trial Thursday, meandering through a cross-examination of Caroline Ellison that at times left even the judge puzzled and impatient.

During the prior two days of testimony, the prosecution presented Ellison as a high-level insider who had, at Bankman-Fried’s direction, overseen the improper borrowing of funds from customers at the FTX crypto exchange run by Bankman-Fried. The funds often were used for investments at an affiliated trading firm, Alameda Research, that was headed by Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s one-time girlfriend.

Bankman-Fried’s lead defense attorney, Mark Cohen, was expected to try to shift the blame for the problems at Alameda to Ellison, following up on his opening statement in the trial where he said Bankman-Fried didn’t commit fraud and instead was trying to clean up a mess largely created by his lieutenants.

Cohen, however, seemed to struggle in his questioning of Ellison, failing to knock any holes in her testimony. He repeatedly changed topics, changed dates of discussion, often seemingly at random.

Several times, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan had to ask Cohen where he was going with his questions or what exactly he was talking about.

After Ellison finished testifying, prosecutors brought out a former software developer at Alameda who largely backed up what Ellison told the jury.

“I was utterly shocked,” said Christian Drappi, who worked for a year at the crypto trading firm and was present when Ellison came clean to Alameda employees in November 2022 that the trading firm had been using FTX customer funds. Exchanges like FTX are supposed to segregate customers’ deposits from any bets they place in the…