The root cause is that he wrote most of the book before the fraud came out, so the tone is wrong.
For the book to sell, he had to release it now, while the story is ongoing. But that means he doesn't have time to rewrite the whole thing to get the tone right and pretend he wasn't charmed.
So either he's pretending he was charmed by SBF so that he can pretend the book makes sense, or he really was charmed. Either of these outcomes boosts his book sales.
Lewis believes what he needs to believe to sell his book. Is that a coincidence? Maybe.
Actually Lewis explicitly says in the interview that he didn't write a word before the indictment and was actually complaining he didn't have a way to end the story. True or not I can't say but I get the feeling he has considered SBF as a subject deeply and is responding to wholly justified criticism of the recklessness by filling in the gaps and that comes across as a defensive position but if the interview had been shining praise on SBF then Lewis may have come off looking like a harsh critic for the same reason of balancing out the picture. Perhaps I am being too generous but the whole saga is fascinating partly because there are so many possible interpretations of causes beyond the facts involved.
For the book to sell, he had to release it now, while the story is ongoing. But that means he doesn't have time to rewrite the whole thing to get the tone right and pretend he wasn't charmed.
So either he's pretending he was charmed by SBF so that he can pretend the book makes sense, or he really was charmed. Either of these outcomes boosts his book sales.
Lewis believes what he needs to believe to sell his book. Is that a coincidence? Maybe.