The Ethereum developer lawyers (here the quotation in real time) Virgil Griffith filed new documents last week claiming that both he and they still don't know exactly what he is accused of.
Unknown accusation
Griffith, who was charged last year for violating U.S. sanctions law by traveling to North Korea and teaching locals how to transfer funds using cryptocurrency, has not yet received a list of the actual crimes for which he is. been indicted, according to a December 8 document published within the federal judicial system.
"The defense should not be forced to use a ring decoder on more than 6.800 pages of minutes - many of which have been heavily blacked out by the government - to discern the basic information that should be present in each indictment: what alleged crimes are actually committed, by whom and where ”, the document reads.
According to a statement on Tuesday, this information is not yet available. The document says Griffith is asking for "details" on what services he would provide, who else was involved and how these services violated US law.
Griffith's attorney Brian Klein asked a federal judge to force prosecutors to reveal details and evidence during a hearing in January. At the time, prosecutors said they would meet federal manufacturing requirements.
Legal rights
Griffith's team further argued Tuesday that First Amendment rights protected the Ethereum Foundation programmer from government action. Repeating that Griffith did not receive any payment for his speech in North Korea and therefore did not render any "service", they said Griffith respected his constitutional rights.
The US State Department banned all US citizens from traveling to North Korea without express permission in 2017. The argument was advanced in support of a motion for dismissal filed last month.
Additionally, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) played a much larger role in the investigation that led to Griffith's arrest in 2019 than was initially revealed, a third document said.
FBI agents were discussing the case with OFAC employees as early as October 2019, long before the previously disclosed timeline of November 2019, according to the filing. “The exact nature of the concerns expressed by OFAC is identical to the issues at stake here: that is, whether Mr. Griffith's presentation falls under the disclosure exemption under the Berman Amendment and the FTIA and whether the presentation of a oral lesson constitutes a “service” in the context of a conference ”, reports the document.
Publicly available information is generally exempt from IEEPA restrictions. As such, the filing said, even if Griffith provided information that falls under the OFAC category of "services", it should still fall under the public domain exemption protected by the First Amendment.
