In its closing assertion yesterday, the prosecution pointed repeatedly to the distinction between the fluency and demeanor of Bankman-Fried underneath questioning by his personal legal professionals and his evasiveness in cross-examination.
“Did you notice how on Friday [during direct examination] his testimony was smooth, like it had been rehearsed a bunch of times?” stated Nicolas Roos, the prosecutor, and he “had a perfect memory.” But when questioned by the federal government, Bankman-Fried “couldn’t remember a single detail about his company or what he said publicly.”
In cross-examination, there have been 140 situations by which Bankman-Fried had stated he couldn’t recall the reply to a query, stated Roos. When Bankman-Fried did reply, in the meantime, he “approached every question like up was down and down was up.”
The prosecution additionally sought to debunk the concept, peddled by the protection, that Bankman-Fried was largely unaware of the embezzlement of FTX buyer funds, or the extent of the monetary shortfall it created. To discover Bankman-Fried not-guilty of fraud, Roos informed the jurors, “you would have to believe that the defendant, who graduated from MIT, who ran two billion-dollar companies and who was testifying in Congress, was actually clueless.”