Don’t tell anyone, but Sam Bankman-Fried actually enjoys his now-regular trips to the 21st floor of the Daniel P. Moynihan Federal Courthouse, in Manhattan. After all, save for strolls across the few yards of grass outside his family’s ranch-style house in Palo Alto, his flights, hotel stays, and elevator rides to Judge Lewis Kaplan’s courtroom are his only physical engagement with the outside world. It is here, and only here, where he can feel like a full person—an excuse to don a suit, move with an entourage, and forget, if only for a minute, that he is under house arrest. In this circumscribed existence, federal court hearings are effectively summer vacation for one of America’s most notorious defendants. 

And Bankman-Fried had a rare opportunity to be a little jubilant this Thursday, as he walked into court. The night before, as I was sitting on the tarmac at LAX, awaiting a delayed redeye flight to New York, news crossed the transom that S.B.F. had won his most significant legal victory to date. Federal prosecutors had agreed to “sever” their case—to not immediately proceed with five charges that they belatedly added to his indictment—while they await approval from The Bahamas, which had extradited him on narrower charges. S.B.F., for the first time since perhaps last fall, had reason to smile.