{"id":24405,"date":"2025-04-29T19:17:30","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T19:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=24405"},"modified":"2025-04-29T19:17:30","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T19:17:30","slug":"tornado-cash-cant-be-sanctioned-again-texas-judge-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=24405","title":{"rendered":"Tornado Cash Can\u2019t Be Sanctioned Again, Texas Judge Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Tornado Cash is officially safe from U.S. sanctions, following a district court ruling<\/a> on Monday.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Treasury Department\u2019s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) removed Tornado Cash from its sanctions list in March, several months after an appeals court ruled that the agency had \u201coverstepped its Congressionally-defined authority\u201d by sanctioning the crypto mixing service\u2019s smart contracts back in 2022.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

However, the way that OFAC de-listed Tornado Cash, and the subsequent notices and motions its lawyers filed with the court in March, left apparent wiggle room for the agency to put the mixing service back on its no-fly list in the future, a federal judge said. The Treasury attorneys argued that, because OFAC had revoked sanctions against Tornado Cash before the district court\u2019s final judgment (but after the appeals court\u2019s decisive ruling), the issue was moot.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

But, to the six plaintiffs in Van Loon vs. Treasury<\/em> \u2014 all users of Tornado Cash \u2014 the issue was not, in fact, moot. In an April 21 filing, their lawyers blasted OFAC\u2019s response to the Fifth Circuit\u2019s ruling, calling it \u201ca study in chaos\u201d and accusing them of \u201cwav[ing] the mootness flag\u201d in a last-ditch effort to \u201cevade an adverse judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cEnough is enough,\u201d lawyers for the plaintiff told the judge. \u201cIt is time for this Court to do what the Fifth Circuit ordered months ago \u2026 Defendants\u2019 designation must be held unlawful and set aside.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In his sternly-worded ruling yesterday, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman of the Western District of Texas said that the case was not moot, and sided with the plaintiffs, ruling that OFAC\u2019s designation of Tornado Cash was unlawful and the agency is therefore permanently enjoined from enforcing sanctions against it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201c[OFAC does] not suggest they will not sanction Tornado Cash again, and they may seek to \u2018reenact precisely the same [designation] in the future\u2019,\u201d Pitman wrote. \u201cRather than acknowledge that the Fifth Circuit\u2019s order required delisting Tornado Cash, Defendants state that they exercised their ‘discretion’ in deciding to do so based on more general policy and legal considerations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently pursuing criminal charges against two Tornado Cash developers, Roman Storm and Roman Semenov, who were charged in 2023 with conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter, and conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions. Semenov remains on OFAC\u2019s sanctions list.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche sent DOJ staff a memo informing them of narrowing crypto-related enforcement priorities. Staff were instructed to no longer pursue cases against crypto exchanges, mixing services or offline wallets \u201cfor the acts of their end users or unwitting violations of regulations.\u201d Blanche ordered any ongoing investigations that were not compliant with these new priorities to be dropped, and said that his office would work with the DOJ\u2019s criminal division to decide how to proceed with any ongoing litigation that didn\u2019t meet the new enforcement standards.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The memo has already made waves in ongoing crypto litigation. Prosecutors in the case against the two founders of crypto mixer Samourai Wallet filed a joint request with defense lawyers on Monday, asking the court for a 16-day extension in various deadlines as they decided whether or not to drop charges under the auspices of Blanche\u2019s memo.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

A host of prominent figures in the crypto industry also signed on to a letter <\/a>from the DeFi Education Fund to White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks on Monday, urging U.S. President Donald Trump to intervene in the case to \u201cdiscontinue the Biden-era Department of Justice\u2019s lawless campaign to criminalize open-source software development\u201d and the prosecution of Storm.<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Read more: Samourai Wallet Prosecutors Are Considering Dropping Charges Under New DOJ Enforcement Priorities: Filing<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tornado Cash is officially safe from U.S. sanctions, following a district court ruling on Monday. The Treasury Department\u2019s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) removed Tornado Cash from its sanctions list in March, several months after an appeals court ruled that the agency had \u201coverstepped its Congressionally-defined authority\u201d by sanctioning the crypto mixing service\u2019s smart […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-24405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}