Federal prosecutors have asked a Manhattan judge to retry Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm on money-laundering and sanctions-evasion charges that a jury deadlocked on last August, even as the White House previously signaled openness to pardoning another crypto privacy developer for comparable conduct.
The government intends to retry Storm on counts one and three of the superseding indictment, which carry a combined maximum sentence of up to 40 years.
The retrial request for Storm also arrives amid mixed policy signals from Washington around crypto privacy tools.
"This moment really exposes how incoherent U.S. crypto policy is right now," cybercrime consultant David Sehyeon Baek told Decrypt.
"On one side, you have Treasury finally acknowledging out loud that mixers and privacy tools can be perfectly lawful,” he added. “On the other side, you have the DOJ pressing ahead with a very aggressive criminal theory against a mixer developer, even after a jury already sent a fairly clear signal that it was not fully persuaded the first time."
Speaking on the timing, Baek warned the case appears to be an “attempt to create a precedent” holding open-source developers responsible for what strangers do with their code, adding that if the DOJ succeeds, “it will matter far more than any favorable language” in policy reports or speeches.
Before any retrial begins, the court must rule on Storm's pending Rule 29 motion, a request for acquittal on legal grounds, scheduled for argument on April 9. Storm's defense has said it is “premature” to set a trial date before that motion is resolved.
