A CoinDesk journalist has accused the US government of “weaponising” his old group chat after Tornado Cash and Roman Storm’s defence claimed the prosecution misconstrued evidence.
Danny Nelson shared a screenshot of the chat on Monday and claimed it showed a fellow reporter asking for comments on the $600 million Axie Infinity hack, and specifically how someone would cash out that sum.
However, Storm’s defence argued that the government prosecution had wrongly attributed the writing of this message to Alexey Pertsev, one of the developers of Tornado Cash.
Nelson agreed that the evidence has been misrepresented and said, “Reads a bit differently when you realize it wasn’t him.”
Read more: US prosecutors say Tornado Cash witnesses will ‘waste jury time’
The defence has requested that the evidence be dismissed, and called for an inspection into grand jury proceedings to clarify if it has been presented with false information.
The government apologised, claiming that a formatting error led to the incorrect attribution and a failure to disclose it as a forwarded message. However, it has still requested that the defence’s motion be denied.
It claimed that its mistake “has no bearing on the authenticity of the chats or their reliability,” and added that it doesn’t “change the fact that the defence possessed the version of the chats that the government intends to use at trial for over seven months before raising this issue three days before trial.”
Tornado Cash trial underway
The trial against Storm’s crypto-mixer Tornado Cash started yesterday. Inner City Press reported that Storm’s lawyers addressed the Telegram messages, and Judge Failla complained about a prospective juror discussing crypto with two reporters after telling jurors not to discuss the case.
Last week, various arguments and terminology were also barred from the trial.
For instance, neither the prosecution nor the defence will be allowed to use the words “KYC” or “AML,” while witnesses aren’t allowed to say words such as “illegal” or “legal.”
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