Jailed FTX Exec Withdraws His Request to Compel Government to Abide by Plea Deal

Ryan Salame, the former FTX executive sentenced to 7.5 years in prison in May, has withdrawn a legal request to a New York court asking that the conditions of his plea deal with prosecutors be enforced or that his plea be thrown out and his sentence vacated.

Last week, Salame’s lawyers filed a petition with the court stating that prosecutors had obtained his guilty plea improperly, getting him to agree to plead guilty by dangling promises that they would cease their investigations into Michelle Bond, Salame’s long-time partner and the mother of his young child.

In an order published Thursday night, Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that he would still hold a hearing on the original petition regardless of Salame's motion to withdraw it. The judge made Salame's attendance at the hearing a part of his bail conditions.

Read more: Former FTX Executive Ryan Salame Claims Government Backtracked on Plea Deal

Salame’s petition was filed one day before charges against Bond were made public. Bond, a former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawyer who spent years leading a D.C.-based crypto advocacy group, was indicted in federal court on Aug. 22 for taking illegal campaign contributions from Salame and other FTX employees during her failed 2022 run for a Congressional seat.

According to the petition, prosecutors threatened Bond during plea negotiations and implied that it would “discontinue investigating Bond if Salame pleaded guilty.”

Now that Bond has been indicted, however, Salame is changing course.

“Mr. Salame is withdrawing the Petition so that Ms. Bond may raise the matter in her proceeding,” Salame’s lawyers wrote in the new court documents. “To be clear, Mr. Salame stands by the facts set forth in the Petition and his accompanying declaration. Mr. Salame is withdrawing the Petition, however, to allow the facts to be developed by Ms. Bond, and a ruling to be made in her case.”

“Since the primary relief sought in the Petition is dismissal of the indictment against Ms. Bond, it makes sense to adjudicate the issues raised in the Petition in the docket in which the indictment is pending,” Salame’s lawyers added.

Bond appeared before a magistrate judge in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) on Aug. 22 and was released on a $1 million bond.

She has been charged with four counts related to the alleged campaign finance violations – one count of conspiracy to cause unlawful political contributions, one count of causing and accepting excessive campaign contributions, one count of causing and receiving an unlawful corporate contribution, and one count of causing and receiving a conduit contribution.

Each count carries a maximum five year sentence, if convicted.

UPDATE (Aug. 30, 2024, 02:24 UTC): Adds judge's order.