The federal judge, who monitored Roman Storm’s prosecution, refused to order the Department of Justice to review her items for any material it may have missed that would help the Tornado Cash developer at the end of a 30-minute hearing on Friday morning, though she told the government that it should not have any question of information.
Judge Katherine Polk Failla also gave up that there were no Brady violation problems with the Department of Justice’s conversations with Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (Fincen) about whether mixers were needed to register as money transfers -the conversation that prosecutors pursuing the Samorai Wallet developers – The charges in Storm’s case – said one of the DOJ representatives at the telephone conference on Friday.
If the judge had found out that prosecutors had withheld information, it could affect the case forward.
“I will not require a further review based on the representations made that there is no extra material of this type and based on my views that I do not think the material was performing,” she said.
“There is a difference between ‘This is something I would like to know’ and ‘This is a Brady overgrowth,'” the judge said, referring to a Supreme Court’s precedent that requires prosecutors to share any information that can help an accused with the accused team.
Storm’s defense attorneys argued during the hearing that they had to know when the charges in their case learned about the finc conversation.
“They are planning to say that they charge a conspiracy to serve an unlicensed money sends,” said defense lawyer Brian Klein. “My question is, who should they have a license with? … It is all in the same question. They have only dropped one base … but they still want to say that they charge an illegal money business.”
Thane Rehn, a prosecutor who worked on the DOJ case against Sam Bankman-Fred, said his team would not claim that Tornado content was needed to secure a license.
“The word ‘license’ does not apply here, and the jury is not instructed on licensing problems … What we intend to prove during the trial is that the defendant knew that the transferred funds from criminals,” he said.
The judge did at several points and asked the prosecutors if they were planning to change other theories or charges in the weeks that led to the trial, saying to do so may be unfair to the defense. The trial should start in less than two months.
Read more: Doj will still pursue Roman Storm Box Despite Blanche Memo, prosecutors say
