Pushkin. Hey there, it's Michael Lewis. Before we get to this episode, I want to let you know that you can listen to each episode of Judging Sam The Trial of Sam Bankman Freed ad free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber, and with your subscription you'll also get exclusive access to ad free and early bingeable podcasts like Paul McCartney's new podcast, McCartney A Life and Lyrics, Malcolm Gladwell's Revision Is History, The Happiness Lab from Doctor Lorie Santos,
and tons of other top shows from Pushkin. Sign up an Apple Podcasts or Pushkin dot Fm, Slash Plus. Welcome to Judging Sam The Trial of Sam Bankman Freed. I'm Michael Lewis. We're through week one and a lot's happened so far. The jurors have been picked, the lawyers have given their opening statements, and witnesses are taking the stand. A lot of those witnesses are people I actually interview for my book. It's called Going Infinite, and I've been on book tours, so i haven't been in the courtroom
every day or actually at all. Lydia Jean has, though, and I'm thrilled to catch up with you, LJ.
I'm thrilled to catch up with you too, Michael.
So we're recording this on Saturday, October seventh. You spent the last four days in court. How do you hold them up?
I'm good, Honestly, it's been really fun and great being in court.
Tell me, I want to know what was like just getting into the court.
I mean, I do get there at six am, and then I wait for two hours with other reporters, and then we go through a security line and then we give up our electronics and they count how many electronics you have, and they give you like a little poker chip, and then you wait in another line, and then the marshals take the lucky few and they get to go into the courtroom.
So all I've done. I see in the court room are the drawings, and I don't really have any sense of the space, like is it really tight and closed so you feel like you're close and you can see everything.
Us comparison is to kind of a small church, because we're sitting in pews. The judge is at the front. He comes in, he's wearing robes, and we all stand up and then we sit down and then the jury comes in and they're to the side kind of like honestly where the choir would be, and another set of pews that are feel like they're raised and when they
come in, we stand up and we sit down. So that part really as a Catholics, someone who was raised Catholic, the standing and sitting and not knowing when it's going to happen is very reminiscent of that. The court illustrators sit in the first or second row and they have these boxes of different colored I guess they use like Pastel's. I'm not really an artist, and they have like huge canvases.
One time I got to sit behind them, and it's really fun to watch them draw because there's three of them, and all of their drawings look a little different, right, Like one person will put purple in Sam's hair, another one will make it all black. So it's really interesting to see like everyone's different representations. But that was one
special time that I got to sit behind them. Usually on that side of the court room where the artists are is Sam's family, so his mom and his dad is there, and then they have kind of like a team of people who are always around them.
Is there any vantage point where you can see Sam's face.
Sam's back is to us. So the person whose face we can see is kind of the judge, but he's often behind a huge monitor. And we can see the face of the lawyers when they're doing cross and we can see the witnesses face, but they're really far up.
Can you see the jury's faces?
I can see some of the jury. So yeah, we're all watching to see who's sleeping, who's not a who's taking.
Notes, sleeping, someone's sleeping.
Oh, there's always at least one person who's dozing off at some point. I mean, there's one juror who actually he's an alternate, but he works an overnight shift and he didn't speak up earlier, so this guy hasn't slept in four days. One thing that could surprise you if you're looking down at the courtroom is people doing Crossford puzzles during the break the recesses, not during the trial.
But some journalists bring Crossford puzzles and then everyone works together to finish them, because you know, we don't have our phones, so we have to entertain ourselves however we can.
When you are in Sam's position right now, you must feel like the pig at the Ham and Egg's breakfast, and everybody else is a ticket. Everybody else is sort of interested, and you're committed. You know, it's sort of like your relationship to this event is so existential and of such existential importance, and everybody else's relationship to the event is this kind of basic casual interest, with the
possible exception of your parents. But it's got to be so odd to have so much at stake for yourself and being surrounded by all these people who are just like, not all that invested. They have to write their story, they have to render their judgment, they have to proceed over the trial. Even the lawyers, they have to do their job as lawyers and not embarrass themselves. And it's
just this play that's going on around you. It's all about you, and nobody's feeling anything like the deep dread you're feeling.
It's kind of like that famous painting right the way there's a flying from the s guy and everyone else is kind of going about their daily life. But do you think that Sam is actually feeling?
But you know, it's funny. I think the way he feels, instead of feeling, he calculates, and so that he's sitting there updating on information and trying to think, what's the
next move? Given that, what's the next move? And I also if I had to guess whatever thought Sam is having his lawyers regard as counterproductive, like I think any lawyers that were not family friends would have long ago abandoned him, because he just has such a bullheaded, strong view of how he should go about doing this, and he will seek to impose it on the lawyers, and the lawyers have a whole other idea about how to
do this. So I think he's calculating. I think he's sitting there, you know, hearing stuff, Oh that changes this that way? What do I do next? Like a board game?
Do you think that's why his lawyers are so nervous, because I've been so perplexed as to why, you know, Wondronlla said that one of his lawyers his hands were shaking when he was doing and I'm wondering, you know, these are really high profile defense lawyers. It seems like
we shouldn't be able to read their feelings. They must have done this many times before, and is it maybe because they don't feel fully empowered to mount the sort of defense that they would want to have left to their own devices.
That's a very interesting question, and it's probably because normally their clients trust them, then they are in questioning their every move. So I bet Sam is a big source of their sort of uncertainty. I've had a chance to glance over these endless transcripts, and what's been odd to me is that three of the four people who've testified already I interviewed. Two of them are in the book, and the two I'm most curious about, in order are Gary Wang and Adam You idiot. Let's start with Gary. Gary.
You know, I had reasons for wanting to see all my characters testify, just because I wanted to see how they would be in that circumstance. Gary is one of the most peculiar because he doesn't speak, or he didn't speak like. People would sit next to him for six months and not get a word out of him, and it was just a running It wasn't even a joke, an understanding in their world, in Sam's world that Gary didn't speak. I tried to interview him. It took me
months before I got him in a room alone. And it's the only time in my journalistic life I actually felt guilty for trying to ask someone question. It created such pain that after about ten or fifteen minutes of me trying to pull stuff out him, I said, I'm sorry, let's not do this anymore.
How could you tell that he was in pain? I'm just curious, like, what did he look like when he was in pain?
He was so nervous and uncomfortable. He was monosyllabic when he would answer questions. If he managed to get a sentence out, he would cut himself off because he didn't want to do it anymore. He was perfectly happy with horrible, awkward silences. He was clearly not happy to see me, and it wasn't me. It was just like it was. He didn't like that interaction, and it had always been said of him. So I'm just curious how we handle this, you know.
I was thinking after I saw him, I looked up how you described him, and he said he had this clear, untroubled face and the smile of an angel, but no words, And my experience was the opposite. I saw him walk down the aisle and he just looked really pale and almost like in a way of shadow. And I asked other people what they thought about him, and they were just like, he looks really like he just looked not okay. There was something about him that just seemed really faded,
and he had a lot to say. He talked really really fast. The judge told him to slow down, the prosecutor told him to slow down, and multiple times the court reporter, the person who was trying to write down what he was saying, told him to slow down.
He's, of course, maybe the closest thing to Sam's right hand man. They were pals in college. Sam was always explaining Gary's value to everybody else, and he was the one who was responsible for all the code, so he has unique insight into whatever happened in the code, and what's happening in the code is in some ways the story of this trial. What did he say about about that? What did he say about his and Sam's interactions and what he did in the computer code?
So to your point about how they were friends, the prosecutors showed pictures of Sam and Gary together, and he talked about how Alameda had special privileges on FTX. I think the quote is, we gave special privileges to Alameda research on FTX, which allowed it to withdraw unlimited amounts of funds from the platform, and we lied about this to the public. And then he explained what the four privileges were. I can go through them.
Yeah, that'd be great.
One Alameda's account was able to go negative. Two Alameda had an unlimited line of credit. Three Alameda was able to place orders faster than other accounts. And four deposits of US dollars went to Alameda accounts.
So the only one on that list that surprises me is three.
Alameda was able to place orders faster than other accounts.
The other ones I knew about. But then the question was like, why did did they get into why these privileges existed.
He said that he added these privileges to the code on Sam's instructions, and then he talked about the effect of these privileges, which is that when FTX customers tried to withdraw their money, wasn't there. He did talk about a conversation that happened in June twenty twenty two with Caroline and Gary and Nishad. There had been an accounting
of how much money Alameda owed FTX. And this was the time right when there were lenders to Alameda who wanted their money back, and Gary remembered in this meeting, Sam telling Caroline that she should return the borrows. So return the money to the lenders to Alameda, and Gary said that that money that she used to return the borrows was FTX customer money.
Right. Did you have a sense there were times when Gary was more was even more uncomfortable than normal, or was sort of like a steady performance and you couldn't pick up discomfort.
He was really hard to read, right.
So Adam, Adam, you DiDia. I mean, this was the most amazing drama because you're talking about all of Sam's best friends, and you're also talking about a thing that's kind of happened once before in Sam Bankminfree's life. You know, back in twenty eighteen, he had all of his best friend's affective altrus in this hedge fund and it blows up in half of them think he's a crooker or so catastrophically sloppy. They don't want to be there anymore, and they leave and he thinks, like, my whole world's
just falling apart, and now here we are again. And Adam, you DiDia was his his best friend in college. Is the way Sam would have described him, Adam, you DiDia, you know Hawaii interviewed several times, and his whole thing about Sam was, of all the effective Altruss, he's the most serious. That's his point. It's like all the rest of us all talk the talk, but Sam really walks the walk. And it was Adam who turned him into
a vegan back at MIT. And so, you know, I just envy you the privilege of watching this person put in this position in relation to his friend. I'm wondering what was he like to you and what did he have to say.
I thought Adam seemed very likable and very genuine, and it also really came through to me that he loved Sam. He recounted even at some point texting Sam when everything was starting to fall apart FTX and saying I love you. I'm not going anywhere. Also, he seemed very also compared to Gary, very vibrant and kind of alive, and.
Unlike Gary, he was granted immunity. I don't understand why Adam would need to be granted immunity.
He said that he was great immunity because he was worried that he unwittingly made changes to a computer code that contributed to a crime.
Well, that's interesting. The technical side of things can be so divorced from its consequences that you're not really aware of what you're doing. And that's interesting that Adam y Didy was in that position inside of FTX.
But the thing is he talks about knowing Alameda owed FTX eight billion dollars, right, and then he talked about coming to Sam and saying that eight billion dollars seems like a lot of money. Is this going to be okay? And Sam said to him, you know, we were a bulletproof last year. I'm not sure that we're a bulletproof this year. And Adam said, how long until our bulletproof again? And Sam said maybe six months, maybe three years. If Adam thought that that eight billion dollars was safe, why
would he be concerned about it? You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, fair question. We'll be right back. Welcome back.
Has stammered the book.
The only way for Sam to read the book is if they get it on a thumb drive to him and give it to him along with his the legal documents. And I think they did that either today or maybe they did it yesterday. But there wasn't a PDF of the book until I don't know, Tuesday the publisher was willing to release, so it would only kind of now have found its way into the jail. There's a there's always a question with Sam and books, is if he thinks it's worth his trouble to read the book because
he doesn't read books. He's foreswore books forever, you know, years ago, so they you know, you should reduce it to a blog post. But maybe he has time on his hands and we'll read it.
I was going to say, are you going to to make him like a special blog post version?
So no, the idea of a subject of mine reading the book is always nerve wracking, Like you always wonder how are they going to respond to your portrayal of them?
In this case, it's really not because I watched Sam respond over a year and a half to a gazillion portrayals of himself, and he was kind of weirdly disinterested in all of them, like he didn't ever expect anybody to actually understand him or capture him in any way, and if they were rude about him, no matter how rude, it was like, eh, whatever, even after it all imploded.
So I don't expect to get any particular response, and I certainly don't expect to get either anger or or you missed it or great job, you know, none of that. I'll probably hear, Oh yeah, Sam read the book.
That will kind of be it has this calculating mind. So he has no emotional reaction to your book. How do you think he's going to calculate what your book.
Means for him? I bet he concludes what I long ago thought when he didn't ask, but friends your drinks would ask, what do you think your book's going to do? Even before the book's done, And I remember thinking it will have no effect whatsoever on the legal judgment, but
it may have an effect on the social judgment. And I would not be surprised if his first reaction is it doesn't help me all that much or at all, but it may help my parents like that people understanding the context of it, understanding the spirit of the family, understanding the relationship he had with them a bit. May it may give his parents at least a feeling that some people understand kind of how it all went down, and that changes people's view of them. That's my bet.
My bet is that that's his first reaction. That's his calculation, and I bet he'll say it to them, like, when all this is over, the people, you can be able to hold your head up on the Stanford campus and people won't think your crooks.
I think, are you worried about anything that could come out in court that could change what you wrote or how you think about things.
I'm interested in what might come out of court, which come out so far isn't in. You know, there's gonna be things that obviously it's gonna additive I could. I didn't know everything. I mean, if I had the government's power to subpoena Nishad, Caroline and Gary, I'd have had everything. But I didn't have that power. I mean, this Casett maybe sounds will sound strange to you, but maybe it won't. Nothing that's come out really has surprised me at all.
It does sound like they are pointing out and it's pretty clear as true that right from the beginning there were these conflicts of interests between Alami and f T. Everybody asked this question, I mean, you have one hundred and forty venture capitalists and that's this place. They all asked the question, and they were all told in general terms. No, The thing that you said that surprised me a little bit is everybody asked, specifically, does Alami to have the
right to trade ahead of other people? Like that? Was The fear was it's an irony, right. The fear was that Sam was replicating in crypto the rigging that exists legally in the US financial markets, in the US stock market in particular, that he was going to be giving high frequency traders, namely himself, the right to see other people's trades, to trade ahead of them, all that stuff that high frequency traders in the US stock markets buy as a privilege and pay money for to the exchanges.
And if they did that, if they actually did that, then that's you know, they really did just lie over and over and over because everybody asked that question. The Sam Bankman freed in my Imagine Nation and the Fan Sam Bekman freed in my book. His form of dishonesty is not outright lying. It's not telling you the answer to the question that you really need to hear. It's sort of like framing your question in a way that
he wants to answer it and answering that accurately. It's a mission is less dishonest.
Is that less dishonest though he's equally dishonest.
It is no, No, it's just different. This is no way defending him. This is just like describing how it is. And you felt like when I was interviewing talking to him and I wanted to get it something that he might not want to talk about. I felt I was playing a game of battleship that you know that you know, if you say a four and you hit a four and yes, he would say, yes, you hit my battleship. But if the battleship's on a four and you say a five, he doesn't say, oh, you're you're very near it,
you know he does. It was cagey and so that that's why that surprised me so much, because that would not have been caginess. That was been everybody asking that exact question and them saying no.
It was so great talking to you, Michael. I learned so much and I can't wait to get to talk to you again soon.
It kills me that you get to see this and I don't, so I'll be back with more questions soon. This episode of Judging Sam was hosted by me Michael Lewis Lydia Gencott is our court reporter. Katherine Gerardeau and Nisha Venken produced this show. Sophie Crane is our editor. Our music was composed by Matthias Bossi and John Evans of stell Wagons. Symphinette. Judging Sam is a production of Pushkin Industries. Got a question or comment for me? There's
a website for that atr podcast dot com. That's atr podcast dot com. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you'd like to access bonus episodes and listen ad free, don't forget to sign up for a Pushkin Plus subscription at pushkin dot fm, slash plus, or on our Apple show page