Sam Bankman-Fried's defense team failed to crack Caroline Ellison
At a glance Now in its second week, Thursday’s court session in the criminal fraud trial of Sam Bankman-Fried was mostly taken up with the cross-examination of Caroline Ellison by Bankman-Fried’s defense team. After being previously barred from discussing his venture capital investment in AI startup Anthropic, Bankman-Fried’s defense team appeared aimless in its questioning of Ellison. Defense lawyer Mark Cohen gestured at Ellison’s trading decisions and threats to her leadership of Alameda Research, but didn’t drive home any straightforward reason for the jury to disbelieve her testimony. The cross-examination of Caroline Ellison concluded around 3pm on Thursday, October 12, after hours of questioning by Sam Bankman-Fried ’s defense team. It fell surprisingly short — Bankman-Fried’s lead lawyer Mark Cohen once again lapsed into a rote repetition of points already made by the prosecution, with only a few vague lines of attack emerging. Ellison more than kept her co...