Sam Bankman-Fried struggled on the witness stand in a rare dress rehearsal of what he wants to tell the jury in his trial, the first time in months the world has heard from the former King of Crypto as he attempts to defend the fraud charges against him.

Bankman-Fried spent almost three hours trying to convince a judge to allow him to testify about the role FTX lawyers played in the lead up to the collapse of the crypto-exchange and the alleged mismanagement of customer funds. US District Judge Lewis Kaplan had previously ruled the 31-year-old couldn’t discuss the legal advice during opening arguments, but delayed his expected testimony to decide whether his lawyers could ask him about it in on the stand.