As the star witness, Caroline Ellison, finishes speaking her point-of-view in the SBF’s trial, the defense attorney, Mark Cohen, questions her through a number of topics.
During the first court-hours on Thursday, Cohen asked several questions regarding the direction of Alameda when SBF was not present in management.
Throughout the questioning, the defense attorney moved from topics to topics, including FTX accounts, SBF’s personality, Alameda spreadsheets, and much more that seemed to be a revision of what she testified in the last two days.
Cohen specifically questioned Caroline about her role in managing Alameda without Sam Bankman-Fried getting involved in it. Cohen asked if it was true that SBF was absent for a long period of time while she was the CEO at Alameda, to which she replied yes. Caroline also acknowledged that she made decisions on her own alongside the co-CEO Sam Trabucco while SBF was not directing.
Much of the time, Cohen examined the same information that she had uncovered since the beginning of her testimony on Tuesday. While none of the questions from Cohen seem to be relating to the matter, Judge Kaplan warned him several times and even told him, “I’d like you to go onto something else.”
The quiz also revealed that at one point, Caroline told Sam she wanted to quit as Alameda CEO, while he urged her to stay. “He told me I couldn’t,” she said. SBF told her that “I was too important to quit.”
Caroline was also annoyed with the repetitive questioning in cross-examination. The SBF Attorney also asked Caroline a few personal questions, such as if she was an ambitious person, and she said, “I became more ambitious as Sam encouraged me in that.”
When asked about Alameda’s internal conflicts and team’s disputes in her early days at the firm in 2018, Caroline did not disclose much other than stating that she was aware of the dispute. It is unclear what Cohen was actually referring to, as none of them went further with the question.
Also Read: Did SBF And Caroline Plan To Keep Bitcoin Price Under $20K?
