On Tuesday, Sam Bankman-Fried, widely known as SBF, said he never sought to intimidate witnesses at his scheduled October fraud trial, and there was no reason to jail him.
In a letter to US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, he said that his intentions were mischaracterized by prosecutors when he gave a New York Times reporter the diary of his former girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, who is expected to testify against him.
The letter also noted that Bankman-Fried was merely exercising his right to "fair comment on an article already in progress".
Earlier, Ellison and three former members of Bankman's inner circle, pleaded guilty to fraud charges and agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department.
SBF faces a number of charges for allegedly misusing investor funds for activities beyond the operation of FTX. Bankman-Fried is also charged with violating US campaign finance laws and defrauding the US Federal Elections Commission.
In addition, SBF has been charged with bribing Chinese government officials. The former FTX crypto king was arrested in the Bahamas in December at the request of the US Department of Justice. Bankman-Fried's trial is expected to begin in October. Defense attorneys have requested separate trials: one for the fraud charges and one for the campaign finance and foreign bribery charges.
The FTX collapse foresaw the meltdown of the cryptocurrency market, wiping out at one point some $1.3 trillion from digital currencies, including Bitcoin. The FTX collapse also led to bankruptcy filings by other top crypto names, such as the Celsius Network and the lending unit of Genesis Global Capital.