SBF’s special pardon application, appeals, and retrials move forward in a three-pronged approach, as the legal team bets on multiple possible outcomes

BlockBeats news. On June 8, while officially submitting a pardon application to U.S. President Donald Trump, FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is simultaneously pushing forward multiple judicial proceedings, seeking to overturn the case through administrative and legal channels.

At present, SBF’s team has launched three fronts at the same time. In addition to the newly initiated presidential pardon application, its appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit regarding the conviction result (case number 24-961) completed oral arguments in November 2025 and is still awaiting the outcome. This appeal mainly centers on issues such as the rules for admitting evidence, the fairness of the trial proceedings, and whether the presiding judge showed bias.

Meanwhile, in February 2026, SBF’s mother, Barbara Fried, also filed a motion for a new trial with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York under Article 33 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, arguing that there were violations of due process during the case proceedings and requesting that the court retry the case.

Analysts note that pursuing a pardon application, a federal appeal, and a motion for a new trial in parallel reflects that SBF’s legal team has not pinned its hopes on a single channel. Instead, it is trying to advance both administrative power and judicial procedures in tandem to gain more chances to overturn his 25-year prison sentence. At present, none of the above procedures has reached a final ruling.