Tucker’s Fight, a Cuomo Update & S.B.F.’s Varsity Blues Legal Playbook

Happy Monday, I’m Eriq Gardner. Welcome back to The Rainmaker, a private email about money, power, fame, and most of all, the law. (Was this email forwarded to you? Click this link to subscribe.) In this week’s edition, how Sam Bankman-Fried’s legal team is relying on the Enron playbook and a pair of “Varsity Blues” parents to keep their client out of jail. Plus, the most legally confounding thing about the Hollywood writers strike. But first…
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Happy Monday, I’m Eriq Gardner.

Welcome back to The Rainmaker, a private email about money, power, fame, and most of all, the law. (Was this email forwarded to you? Click this link to subscribe.)

In this week’s edition, how Sam Bankman-Fried’s legal team is relying on the Enron playbook and a pair of “Varsity Blues” parents to keep their client out of jail. Plus, the most legally confounding thing about the Hollywood writers strike. But first…

Will Fox Sue Tucker?: We’re about to find out just how determined Fox News is to keep Tucker Carlson sidelined until his “pay or play” deal expires in 2025. Forget the $15 million (previously misreported as $25 million) that the controversial right-wing star might forgo if he were to immediately relaunch a show on Twitter. That’s not deterring Carlson, who’s got plenty of money and litigator...

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S.B.F.’s Varsity Blues Defense

Lawyers for Bankman-Fried are hoping to turn a seemingly slam-dunk prosecution into an inscrutable legalistic debate over the definition of “fraud,” itself. It might just work.

ERIQ GARDNER

The prosecution of Sam Bankman-Fried, accused of engineering “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history,” would appear to be an open-and-shut case, which is perhaps why most members of S.B.F.’s inner circle at FTX—Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, Nishad Singh—have accepted plea deals with the Justice Department. The 13-count indictment lays out in meticulous detail how S.B.F. allegedly absconded with customer deposits and misled investors and lenders as the crypto market collapsed, incinerating billions of dollars in...

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