Federal prosecutors fired back at Harvard Law School professor emeritus Laurence Tribe and Sam Bankman-Fried’s attorneys in a Thursday letter urging a Manhattan federal judge to detain the FTX founder, arguing that detention does not infringe on Bankman-Fried’s constitutional rights.

“The record here establishes that the defendant went beyond benignly exercising a constitutional right to speak to the press—he took covert steps intended to improperly discredit a trial witness and taint the jury pool,” Danielle Sassoon, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, wrote.