SBF’s Lawyer dramas: Just when you think things can’t get any worse, SBF’s now-former lawyer, Martin Flumenbaum of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison law firm has given SBF a big fat nup and dropped him as a client. As it turns out, no money can put out a dumpster fire.
Flumenbaum was meant to assist SBF in what is being considered one of the most insanely wild financial crime cases in history, but his “incessant and disruptive tweeting” may be to blame. The publicised opinion could be undermining efforts for lawyers to reorganise his crumbling empire.
“We informed Mr. Bankman-Fried several days ago, after the filing of the FTX bankruptcy that conflicts have arisen that precluded us from representing him,” the firm’s counsel said in a statement.
According to Reuters, SBF’s recent comments on Twitter and conversations with reporters will likely make “life more difficult for the defense lawyers seeking to manage fallout from the exchange’s demise and navigate multiple federal investigations.”
SBF is currently being investigated by the Justice Department, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Flumenbaum’s firm told Reuters they informed SBF several days ago after the filing of the FTX bankruptcy that it was a conflict of interest, precluding them from representing him, but declined to describe the conflicts. This could be because he is currently defending Christian Larsen, the chair of the crypto payment and exchange platform Ripple Labs Inc, which is currently in a lawsuit filed by the SEC.
SBF’s Lawyer dramas
Last week, SBF stated to a Vox reporter that he blames the collapse on “messy accounting” and expressed his regret at the decision to file for bankruptcy.
It appears the only way out for SBF would be to declare he’s an ‘incompetent moron’ and had no intentions of committing a crime, but just sucks at handling billions of dollars of cryptocurrencies.
SBF will now be represented by David Mills, a criminal law professor at Stanford University, where SBF’s father, Joseph Bankman, teaches law. Both SBF’s parents are on the faculty of Stanford Law School.
According to Tiffany Fong who recently spoke with SBF, he said his lawyer “chewed him the fu*k out” for his apologetic tweets and told him to “promise that you never ever say you fucked up again”. Fong stated that SBF allegedly told his lawyer to “go fu*k himself”.
