NEW YORK, New York — The judge overseeing the criminal case against Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm said Tuesday she will not allow the verdict in another, related case, Van Loon vs. Department of the Treasury, to be discussed during Storm’s upcoming trial.
“The words ‘Van Loon’ are not going to show up in this trial,” District Judge Katherine Polk Failla said during a Tuesday hearing in Manhattan.
The hearing — a final, in-person status conference before Storm’s trial begins on June 14 — largely focused on motions in limine (a type of pretrial motion to exclude certain evidence or arguments, in this case largely witness testimony, from being allowed during trial) from both prosecutors and Storm’s defense team. After hearing discussion from both sides, Failla decided to rule on some of the motions in limine on Tuesday afternoon, as well as during telephone conferences later this week.
Though the judge has not yet made up her mind on which witnesses will be allowed to testify during Storm’s trial, she was firm in her decision to preclude testimony about the Van Loon case, which concerned the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control’s (OFAC) ability to sanction Tornado Cash. After years of back and forth, OFAC delisted Tornado Cash in March. A federal judge in Texas then found that OFAC’s sanctioning of Tornado Cash was illegal and prohibited it from relisting the privacy tool in the future.
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Failla said her mind was not yet made up on whether to allow either side to discuss OFAC’s sanctions against Tornado Cash, expressing concern that it would confuse the jury.
Storm’s lawyers told the court that they’d prefer the sanctions to be excluded from witness testimony and closing arguments during trial, but prosecutors said that it would be difficult to navigate important evidence, such as Storm’s alleged behavior (including certain Google searches, selling $12 million worth of TORN tokens, and ceding control of Tornado Cash to a decentralized entity) after OFAC initially sanctioned Tornado Cash without discussion the sanctions themselves.
Though not made in a formal ruling, Failla urged both the defense and prosecution to limit their references to North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program. A key part of the government’s argument is that Tornado Cash facilitated money laundering for the Lazarus Group, North Korea’s state-sanctioned hacking group.
The trial, initially slated to run two weeks but now expected to go for a full month, will start on July 14 in Manhattan.