SDNY to Tornado Cash Dev: Your Copyright Defense Is a Wash

Jay Clayton, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and former SEC chair, has penned a response to Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm's motion for acquittal, calling his alleged criminal behavior "window dressing at best and outright misdirection at worst." Clayton, who once brought the crypto world to its knees with endless ETF delays, is now apparently moonlighting as the district attorney's favorite legal weapon. The man really can't catch a break from the spotlight.

In a Tuesday filing in US District Court, Clayton rejected Storm's attempt to use a civil copyright case in his defense. Storm's lawyers intended to cite a 2026 Supreme Court case, Cox Communications Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, as part of an argument about the co-founder's intent to participate in the crimes of which he's accused: conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate sanctions. Yes, you read that right—the "I was just writing open-source code" defense is now apparently pivoting to "but think of the copyright precedent!" The mental gymnastics here would make a DeFi yield optimizer jealous.

The US Attorney wasn't having it. According to Clayton, there was no evidence that Storm implemented effective anti-money-laundering measures, and his conduct "bears no resemblance" to the Cox case, which involved civil liability for copyright infringement. "The defendant's conduct simply is not comparable to the conduct at issue in Cox," said Clayton. "In any event, a civil copyright case has no relevance here in the first place." Translation: nice try, but you can't launder money through a music licensing argument. Even by crypto legal standards, this one was a stretch.

Last August, a jury convicted Storm of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, but deadlocked on the money laundering and sanctions charges, opening the door to a potential retrial. Clayton has asked a federal judge to consider an October retrial, though no date had been set as of Tuesday. So basically, the jury said "yeah, definitely guilty on the unlicensed money transmitter thing" but couldn't quite agree on whether the mixing was money laundering or just really aggressive privacy farming. Split decision vibes.

Storm has pointed to Deputy AG Todd Blanche's April 2025 memo calling for an end to "regulation by prosecution" in the Justice Department. Although Blanche didn't name Storm, the Tornado Cash co-founder cited the memo after prosecutors announced plans to retry him on the two deadlocked counts. Nothing says "I definitely didn't do anything wrong" like aggressively quoting a memo that wasn't even about you. But hey, when you're facing 40 years, you take what you can get.

"The 2 counts = up to 40 years in federal prison," Storm said in a March X post. "For writing open-source code. For a protocol I don't control. For transactions I never touched. A jury already couldn't agree this was criminal. But the SDNY prosecutors want to keep trying with the hope of getting a different answer." Classic "I was just a humble coder" argument, delivered with the kind of desperation only someone facing federal time can muster. The "different answer" part is particularly bold—apparently Storm thinks SDNY is just going to roll the dice until they get the verdict they want. Which, honestly, isn't the wildest theory.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys are scheduled to meet on Thursday. Another day, another court date, another chapter in the saga that's been giving crypto Twitter more content than a full week of rug pulls and DAO governance disasters combined. Stay tuned.