Thanks for sharing. He does not know how to stop digging his hole even deeper. I do not recall off the top of my head ever reading such a whiny, self-indulgent statement by a criminal defendant or defendant-to-be.
I find it disappointing that he tries to use EA as a shield (p 17, “As a believer in the Effective Altruism movement, my primary goal has never been personal enrichment; I’m motivated by a commitment to help bring happiness and alleviate suffering for others.”) This is in the context of denying that he has billions of dollars stashed away. If he really cared about bringing happiness and alleviating suffering, why would he further tarnish the EA community’s reputation by associating himself with it in testimony before Congress?
He probably cares about those things less than he cares about minimizing the number of decades he spends in a modern dungeon known as a United States Penitentiary. And he thinks that painting himself as having had good motives at heart will curry favor with the sentencing judge he is likely to face.
(By the way, I think his strategy will backfire—it might have been a reasonable mitigation strategy if he had chosen to come clean almost immediately after the collapse. But—assuming he is convicted—when combined with his denials of misconduct, it will come across as fake piety that will not play well in front of most judges.)
That updates the probability that no lawyer reviewed this before he sent it to whoever he sent it to (someone in/at Congress?). I would hope that most of us would have caught that typo in a document of this nature . . .
Thanks for sharing. He does not know how to stop digging his hole even deeper. I do not recall off the top of my head ever reading such a whiny, self-indulgent statement by a criminal defendant or defendant-to-be.
I find it disappointing that he tries to use EA as a shield (p 17, “As a believer in the Effective Altruism movement, my primary goal has never been personal enrichment; I’m motivated by a commitment to help bring happiness and alleviate suffering for others.”) This is in the context of denying that he has billions of dollars stashed away. If he really cared about bringing happiness and alleviating suffering, why would he further tarnish the EA community’s reputation by associating himself with it in testimony before Congress?
He probably cares about those things less than he cares about minimizing the number of decades he spends in a modern dungeon known as a United States Penitentiary. And he thinks that painting himself as having had good motives at heart will curry favor with the sentencing judge he is likely to face.
(By the way, I think his strategy will backfire—it might have been a reasonable mitigation strategy if he had chosen to come clean almost immediately after the collapse. But—assuming he is convicted—when combined with his denials of misconduct, it will come across as fake piety that will not play well in front of most judges.)
Yep. The only bit I’m qualified to assess is that he uses the phrase ‘chalk full’ instead of ‘chock fill’. He should have read more books.
That updates the probability that no lawyer reviewed this before he sent it to whoever he sent it to (someone in/at Congress?). I would hope that most of us would have caught that typo in a document of this nature . . .