CourtCartoonsUSA

Ready for some fun?

[CourtCartoonsUSA @CourtCartoons]

THE COURT: "How does speaking falsely become an overt act?"
MR. ARAD: [three sentences of hand-waving]
THE COURT: "A bit attenuated."

When even the Rule 29 judge says your overt act is "attenuated," you have a problem.

[CourtCartoonsUSA @CourtCartoons]

@JacobRobinsonJD @LawofCodeFM @valkenburgh @amandatums @brianeklein Rare depth on a complex issue. Great work

[CourtCartoonsUSA @CourtCartoons]

The jury hung on 2 of 3 counts. That alone tells you how thin the government's case was. At Rule 29 oral argument, the prosecution's theory was visibly struggling under the weight of its own contradictions.

[CourtCartoonsUSA @CourtCartoons]

The government's theory of the Storm prosecution, stripped to its essentials:

→Opening your laptop is a felony
→Clean money gets dirty by proximity
→Telling the truth can be an overt act
→Shipping a sanctions screener proves guilt
→You must "withdraw" from immutable code

[CourtCartoonsUSA @CourtCartoons]

Government theory: improving an open-source privacy tool proves you built it for criminals.

By that logic: if you build a faster car and a bank robber buys it as a getaway vehicle, you built the car for the bank robber.

[CourtCartoonsUSA @CourtCartoons]

@Cointelegraph It’s hard to talk about a real policy change while the Roman Storm case continues unchanged.

[CourtCartoonsUSA @CourtCartoons]

The government says Storm should have walked away once a "large part" of Tornado Cash users were criminals. Asked what "large part" means, the government couldn't say. 15%? 37%? 55%?

"Nobody knows. When should he have walked away? Nobody knows." — Klein.

[CourtCartoonsUSA @CourtCartoons]

Even on a Rule 29 motion — where the judge must give the government every reasonable inference — Failla repeatedly signaled she wasn't buying it:

"I may ultimately agree with you that the affirmative conduct posited by the government does not suffice."

[CourtCartoonsUSA @CourtCartoons]

The government called the public, on-chain, community-voted Tornado Cash relayer registry "concealment."

It was proposed in a public Medium post, voted on by the community, and deployed on-chain. Per the government's own expert: "the founders did not control that vote."

[CourtCartoonsUSA @CourtCartoons]

@TheBitcoinConf @Kash_Patel @FBIDirectorKash Maybe worth asking Roman Storm and others facing charges how “code is free speech” is working out in practice.

[CourtCartoonsUSA @CourtCartoons]

Storm and his co-founders actually implemented the Chainalysis sanctions oracle — a real, working screening mechanism that blocked 100% transactions from sanctioned wallets —Klein

The government's response? Doing the right thing was evidence of guilt. Heads I win, tails you lose

[CourtCartoonsUSA @CourtCartoons]

/cc: @VitalikButerin @ameensol @TuckerCarlson @coincenter

[CourtCartoonsUSA @CourtCartoons]

1/ One of the government's "overt acts" in the money-laundering conspiracy: Roman Storm told a BitMart attorney he didn't control the protocol and couldn't recover their hacked funds. The government calls this a lie. 🧵

[CourtCartoonsUSA @CourtCartoons]

5/ The prosecution's theory: telling a hack victim a factually accurate statement can be an "overt act" of conspiracy because the *effect* of the truth was to discourage them from calling the police. This criminalizes reality. /end

[CourtCartoonsUSA @CourtCartoons]

/cc: @valkenburgh @unstoppablebyhs @m_mosier_ @leamuirleyn

[CourtCartoonsUSA @CourtCartoons]

1/ The government's star "willfulness" theory: Roman Storm should have added a *name-and-email login screen* to the Tornado Cash UI. Their expert calls it a "user registry." I have questions. 🧵

[CourtCartoonsUSA @CourtCartoons]

6/ Judge Failla cut right to it:

"I am concerned that that allows the jury to convict Mr. Storm for not doing what he was not legally required to do."

Arad had no answer. /end