Latest / The Aaron Day Show / Enemies of the State Rebroadcast
Transcript
- please welcome to the stage your host, Mark Edge. Thanks for coming, everybody. Really appreciate it. To our party with a purpose, the enemies of the state, I know you're all from all around the United States, and there's probably a few select of you from around the world. So thanks for coming. First thing, I found a lifetime member libertarian pen. You paid a thousand dollars for this thing. If it's yours, if you're a life member of the LP, check your lapel. If your pen is missing, I will have it on the sound table in a few moments. So we're gonna start off the first segment's called the absurdity of the state. And in fact, the absurdity is who they're going after and why they're going after them. And you'll find out here shortly. First, we're gonna start with Jeff Weinhaus. Jeff Weinhaus is an activist and outspoken critic of government authority whose case has become a stark example of the consequences faced by those who challenge power. After being shot several times by a police officer who was reportedly under the influence of medication, Weinhaus survived. Not only to be prosecuted and sentenced to decades in prison, his case raises serious concerns about the use of force, due process, and whether justice is being applied fairly when individuals confront government officials. It stands as a powerful reminder of how quickly the roles of victim and defendant can be reversed when authority is questioned. I'd like to welcome to the stage Ammon Bundy. Ammon Bundy is gonna tell us more about Jeffrey Winehouse. All right, I am here to advocate for Jeff Winehouse. I'm gonna take a few minutes here. because it is such an injustice that I cannot just sit around and say nothing about this. This man has spent the last eleven years in prison, and he is an innocent man. And what is his supposed crime? That he was exposing government corruption. Another name for Jeff Winehouse is the bulletin man and I look it up there's great videos about what he used to do because he was like the kind of the at the forefront of independent journalism he had this. He would publish these bulletins and he would print them and then he'd pass them out all over and he had this website and he was doing videos long before YouTube, long before any of this stuff that we do now. And he was putting a lot of pressure by exposing corruption in government. And he was very effective at it. And he had this drive, and he wouldn't let go of anything. He just kept digging and digging. Well, what happened is he ran into some very strong evidence that government officials had murdered a person. And he had this evidence. He started speaking about it. He was about ready to expose it. And what happens? they come and raid his house they take all his computers they take all his gear and now he's not he doesn't have the ability to reach out to people but he kept doing videos and trying to do the best he could and he was complaining a lot about the them taking his computer and he wanted those computer these computers back he had all this information on it And so they call him back, and this was the Missouri state and the county official, sheriff's office. They call him back, and they make arrangements to meet him to give him back his computers. The arrangement, however, was at an old abandoned gas station. which has seemed odd for Jeff, but he really wanted his stuff back. So he meets him there. He gets out of the car. He's holding a camera. And he does have a sidearm, but it's in a parachuter case where it takes multiple hands to get it out. he's saying he's filming them and they act like he's pulling the gun he still has his hand the one hand that he has to pull the gun out with if he does he still has his hand on the camera and they shoot him twice in the chest the same officer and twice in the head now imagine this In order to, I mean, those are kill shots. Those are meant to kill. When you shoot somebody twice in the chest and twice in the head, you're intending absolutely to kill him. That's what an assassin does, right? But imagine the actual act of this. You shoot him and he goes down, and then you shoot him while he's on the ground twice in the head. Well, anyway, Jeff refused to die. He refused to die. I mean, he's a tough son of a gun and he doesn't even, he doesn't even, he really actually goes to the hospital. He's in the hospital obviously for several days, but he gets out fairly quickly. There's never any handcuffs on him when he's in the hospital. He's not charged with anything. He leaves and goes home and then, twenty-one days later, they charge him with assault on an officer with a deadly weapon and they prosecute him under those charges they withhold all the evidence because as this audience probably knows your day in trial your fair trial is not really that fair and the jury never really gets to hear the truth and that's what happened with jeff they withheld a tremendous amount of of evidence they did not allow much to be brought in and they convicted him because there's a ques there's a there's an old adage that says he who asks the question wins the argument he who asks the question wins the argument and these prosecutors have it to where they know how to make it so that no question in the court is allowed without their permission and so they can only give the jury we can only give the jury what the prosecutors want pretty much. And that's what happened to Jeff. What was withheld? Well, they found out later that the officer, later after his trial, after his conviction, that the officer was diagnosed with PTSD, that he was also on certain drugs that were both altering his psychological abilities, but also other drugs they found in his system. They also found out that the officer that shot him multiple times was in the process of being fired from the state of Missouri police force. And all of these things came out, but now here Jeff sets in prison and he's tried to appeal on this new information that that has come forth that was withheld from him and no judge will hear it on the district level on the circuit level or on the supreme court level of the state they will not even have a hearing and so an innocent man today sets in prison And there's something that needs to be done. We cannot just let this innocent man stay in prison and do nothing. And that's why I'm advocating for him today. He is an innocent man. There are guilty people that need to be brought to justice. But it's certainly not just one house. Thank you. Thank you, Annan. Appreciate your time. Before we go any further, I want to thank the sponsors of this event. These things don't pay for themselves, as you know. By the way, tip your servers. Top sponsors are Bitcoin.com, and Freedom Dollar. So bitcoin.com is your source for all news regarding cryptocurrency and Freedom Dollar is the only stable coin that you can use, the only one that you can use that cannot be stopped. The rest of them are basically backdoor CBDCs. So check out Freedom Dollar, it's FUSD. Yes, that's intentional. Also, our sponsor is Free Talk Live. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Bloodless revolution. Think penguin. Here we are. Taggart trading. Pirate chain. New Jersey dollar vigilante. Central Jersey libertarians. And all of our donors we really appreciate you guys owning up for this party with a purpose enemies of the state, thank you. I hope you guys sign the petitions to get all these guys out of prison it's really the best thing that we can do at this point, many of the families do need support your support financially and. I talked to Ian before this event. He asked that any support that you might want to send his way as far as money or anything like that, go to the Samurai Wallet guys. Next up, the video, Ray Youssef is an entrepreneur and freedom advocate best known as the co-founder of Paxful, a platform built to give people around the world access to financial tools, outside of traditional banking systems. His focus on empowering individuals in underserved communities through peer-to-peer exchange led Paxful to being named as one of the world's most influential companies by Time Magazine when he was the CEO. Yusef's work reflects a commitment to economic freedom and the belief that everyone should have the ability to control and access their own money without reliance on centralized institutions. My name is Ray Yusef and I am guilty of the one unforgivable crime. Helping people in the global South use their money without borders and without limits. The DOJ hounded me for eight years. And then finally had me arrested and kidnapped by twenty federal agents in Mexico City and reported back to America to stand trial for charges that make no sense. Now, if you've been following the war on crypto, you know it never ended. Roman Storm and so many others have been arrested simply for writing software that allows people to transact privately. And the thing they have all in common is that there's this one charge, running a money transmitter business without the money transmitter licenses. Well, in my case, we actually had money transmitter licenses. Yes, we did. And we had the best compliance program in our entire space, better than any of the other big exchanges. One third of the company was compliance, bigger than most banks. We even had one of the strongest KYC policies in the world. And we actually managed the KYC people in Africa that didn't even have IDs. Yet, they still hit us with a charge, which was a conspiracy to have an inadequate compliance program. How do you conspire to not do something? And all this really shows is that they don't care. Why did you try to keep them? above and beyond, comply to the utmost, and they will still come after you if you are actually successful in helping people. This is the key. My name is Ray. I do peer-to-peer. I don't run an exchange where people gamble on meme coins. It's like a big lottery of tax on the poor. I stayed away from all that. For a time, our exchange was bigger than Binance in places like Africa and India. All the investors were like, hey, Ray, We'll invest in you if you start an exchange, you can really dominate the market. And I said, no, I don't want that. This is peer-to-peer electronic cash. We want to help people use their money so these people can create wealth in their countries. Now, the powers that be never thought that someone would actually be able to do this, to actually get Bitcoin as peer-to-peer electronic cash to places like Africa. But someone did. That person was me. I wasn't lucky. I was blessed. difference they never thought that someone like me didn't take any of their money didn't take money from anyone who was actually homeless when they started this business could actually pull something like that on by the grace of god who did and then they are like wow didn't see this coming but you know we have to make an example of this guy and that's why they're coming Now, on top of all that, I am literally the only FinTech CEO in the world that speaks out for the oppressed consistently, including God, from day one. These are the same people that stole the election from Thomas Madison. These are the same people that stole all they do is steal elections, or rig votes, bribe people. These are the people that own our banks, own our media, and now own our politicians. This is the Epstein class. They don't like me. It's a spiritual thing. Well, guess what? I don't like them either. And I'm not backing down. So I will fight this trial. And don't worry about me. Thank God I have the funds to be able to actually fight in court. And while their charges are bogus, we were absolutely the best operator and agent and actor in this business. And we had tremendous success. We even got on my company in Time Magazine. That didn't matter, though. The DOJ still shut it down. But guess what, folks? The battle continues. So from all of you listening, I want you to understand, this is a spiritual battle. This is a spiritual warfare. People like me who speak the truth and we're actually honest and good, never lost anyone's money and help people to use their money in a peer-to-peer fashion, we're public enemy number one. Even more so than people that write privacy software. Because we represent a spiritual divergence that they simply cannot handle. The machine cannot tolerate So I don't need money, but I do need your support. Tell people the truth. Tell people about my story, about Roman and all the others. We're the good guys. The war on crypto never ended. It only just began. want to make sure that they stop the peer-to-peer out of this and it's just a machine to rob people that's not what we need folks we need a place where everyone can transact about borders and without limits so people can create wealth that way my family would never have to immigrate from egypt to america or anywhere else we could have stayed back home with great lives created wealth A land as rich and as plentiful as Egypt and all of Africa. They don't want that world. They want a world where they're the unipower. Well, the unipower is already falling. It's only a matter of time. These creatures are like parasites. Let's continue to call them out. Let's continue to support the good guys and never lose hope. We're going to win this thing. It's just going to be rough going. But we're in the end times. And I love a challenge. And I certainly hope you do as well. Thank you. My job at Free Talk Live, being the host for twenty five years going on now, has allowed me to meet a lot of great activists. One of my favorite of those activists, Jim Babb. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Mark. Thank you all for coming. Thank you to every enemy of the state. If you're a libertarian, they have declared you their enemy. If you love freedom, the state hates your guts. If you build the tools that help people free the world, you will become enemy number one. Tonight we are recognizing some individuals that have been deemed so dangerous that they must be imprisoned, of course, they aren't dangerous to anyone but tyrants. So i'd like to take a moment first to thank you for coming and i'd also like to thank our streaming sponsors and people listening online and. I'd like to also thank our sponsors. Mark mentioned Freedom Dollar, Bitcoin.com, Free Talk Live. I'd also like to mention Bloodless Revolution, Think Penguin, Taggart Trading, Anarchapulco, Live Free Academy, New Jersey Dollar Vigilante, Pirate Chain, and of course, Punk Rock Libertarians. So please give a round of applause for our very generous sponsors. They say if you are the smartest person in the room, then you're in the wrong room. I'm going to say my version is also if you hate the state more than everyone in the room, you're in the wrong room. In both cases, I'm in the right room. And I want to just give a shout out to our staff members and our volunteers at Enemies of the State, which have just been incredible to work with. Just tireless, very talented, and absolutely dedicated to this cause. So thank you guys. The men and women that have been working on this are truly amazing. Dexter Taylor is a software engineer from Brooklyn. He was convicted of charges related to the possession and manufacture of unlicensed firearms, often called ghost guns. However, Dexter refers to them as traditional firearms, as the home manufacturer of weapons is an American tradition. The Second Amendment allegedly protects our freedom of self-defense. The New York State Constitution boldly declares that the right of self-defense cannot be infringed. What a joke. A peaceful man is in jail right now for manufacturing firearms in his basement. Now, did he use these firearms to commit a crime? No. Did he sell these firearms to someone else that was going to commit a crime? No. As far as I know, his creations never even left his house. The manufacturer of weapons at home, whether it's three-D printed, milled, or just assembled out of plumbing parts, creates a ceiling for gun control. No matter what laws they pass, We can't be completely disarmed as long as we can manufacture our own weapons. Those that dream of a disarmed population to dominate cannot tolerate people like Dexter Taylor, because not only does he develop and create weapons, but he teaches and inspires others to exercise their rights. Dexter has an appeal in progress right now, and he has raised almost three hundred thousand dollars of a four hundred thousand dollar goal. I'd like to close that gap to cover his defense because he needs the best defense possible. And when he wins, his victory will reinforce our right of self-defense for everyone. Dexter would love to be here with us right now. He loves freedom as much as everyone in this room. But instead he has, I got a chance to speak with him and he has recorded a brief message to share with you. And we're gonna play that right now. So thank you very much. So why did the New York government declare me to be an enemy of the state? That's a very good question. I think it's because the people who govern us, the Democrats who govern New York State and New York City, have given up on the fundamental purpose of the law, the criminal law. In my opinion, the fundamental purpose of criminal law is to prevent the decent from the wicked. But we have a situation where, because the things the government, the New York government would have to do to really get a handle on the wicked bring on the defense. The thing that have to do to really get a handle on that would involve overturning many other political work that they've had in some cases for decades. Black conservatives like me have been thinking for a long time that the blightedness and the brokenness and the violence and the crime in many of our cities has a root cause in the destruction of the family. right the family of the foundation of civilization cornerstone of society if you break family you break society if you break society all hell breaks loose we see that this is true everywhere they can't admit that breaking the family problem because breaking the family, you know that I think illegitimacy like pretending as if the state can actually be a part of the children like these things are central to the liberal Democratic political orthodoxy in New York state and then you know of the United States in general. So back to the original question. They have to make enemies of people like me. The focus of human beings running around hurting other human beings right they have to focus on this instrument right and they have to say this instrument is evil and if you if you manufacture one in your house even though you have a clean record right even though you have to criminal background check even though you're remembering the sending of your gun range even though you're a productive citizen you're a working man your family man even though you're all those things we have to go after you so that's That's my take on why they've decided to make me an enemy of the state. I do want to thank again Bitcoin.com and Freedom Dollar for their sponsorship of this event and all the effort that everyone here involved has put into freeing these men who it's just absurd that they're all in prison. It's ridiculous that these people are locked up. You can hear this guy. What do you do wrong? I mean, do we not have a second amendment in this country? You can't make a firearm in your own home. He's not talking about selling it. He's talking, talking about distributing it. They had to go after him. He's right. Next up. a man whom I greatly respect and who will be kicking off his senatorial campaign here in the near future, Aaron Day. Good evening. So in twenty twenty four, we came together for this same event, Washington, D.C. And at that time I was speaking on behalf of Roger Ver. who at that time was in a prison, a Spanish prison, the same one that fellow friend and libertarian John McAfee died in under mysterious circumstances. But there were only three crypto prisoners at that time. The next day I sat at the convention and watched Trump give his talk. Well, but the good news is he said he was gonna commute Ross's sentence and he did And then he declared the war on crypto is over. Well, I'm here to tell you tonight the war on crypto is not over. It's not over because he passed an executive order saying there will be no CBDCs, only to push the Genius Act, which is a backdoor CBDC that takes thirty three trillion dollars worth of private stable coins and puts them under the control, trackability, programmability and censorship of the federal government. The Clarity Act goes beyond that and tokenizes everything that you own, your stocks, your bonds, your house, and gives the keys to BlackRock and the government in the same way they control stable coins. But that conversation is a different conversation. I have that all the time. You can hear my podcast, but it is related to the war on crypto. Tonight, we're here to talk about six men in six cages and one pattern. And it's not about crypto. This is a war on free speech. It's a war on innovation. It's a war on fundamental American values this country was founded on. I will not have time to walk through each man's case. Other people will be coming and speaking about each of the POWs individually. But I am gonna tell you about seven things that connect them all. Some apply to all six, some apply to most, some apply to specific men, but every one of these threads runs through a pattern. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. One, counsel. Ian Freeman had a paid opinion letter from an attorney that said he didn't need a money transmitter license. The letter was never allowed to be mentioned in court. Roman Storm had his own lawyers. His investors had their lawyers. And the entire Ethereum community was relying on a twenty nineteen FinCEN guidance document that said non-custodial software is not money transmission. And here's the most damning fact in this entire war. Six months before SDNY prosecutors indicted Keone Rodriguez and William Hill, those same prosecutors called FinCEN They asked in writing, is Samurai Wallet a money service business? FinCED told them in writing, no, it is not. The prosecutors hid that letter for twenty months and then indicted the men anyway. If we let the government strip your right to rely on honest advice from your own lawyer, we're not just weak in one defense, we shatter the entire foundation of the rule of law. Fair notice dies, predictability dies, and raw government replaces justice. Two, they were all targeted because what they believed. Ian Freeman was previously rated by the FBI in twenty sixteen with no charges filed, then again in twenty twenty one with armored vehicles and drones. Because he spent twenty years on the radio promoting liberty and because he was the first radio host in the entire world to talk about Bitcoin in twenty ten. The judge who sentenced Ross Ulbricht stood in open court and called his libertarian philosophy, quote, deeply troubling, terribly misguided, and very dangerous. The judge who sentenced Keone Rodriguez to the statutory maximum said he was, quote, functioning with moral blinders on. Those moral blinders are his belief that you have the right to financial privacy. Three, four of these men, Keone Rodriguez, William Hill, Roman Storm, and Roman Sterlingoff were building tools to restore the Fourth Amendment. They were simply trying to uphold our right to privacy. And for that, they were targeted and continue to be targeted to this day. Four, state force was the message. Sam Bankman Freed stole ten billion dollars and got a polite Bahamas extradition and the largest bail in American history. Bernie Madoff's son called the FBI. Keone Rodriguez built a non-custodial wallet and got more than forty armed FBI tactical agents pointing assault rifles at his chest in the morning. Drones, armored vehicles, men dressed like G.I. Joe. Roman Storm got rifles drawn in his living room in front of his daughter. William Hill had the Portuguese police kicking his door in Lisbon and seized twenty-seven devices. Ray Youssef was hauled out of Mexico and dumped on a tarmac in Los Angeles in handcuffs. And I was there at Mineratopia at that event where he was taken away. And Roman Sterling off was stopped at the airport at LAX and held for forty one months without bail. Three and a half years before a single juror ever heard his case. Five, the tactics of the Department of Justice should sicken everyone in this room. U.S. attorney who personally announced the Roman Storm and Samurai indictment, Damien Williams, who called himself the sheriff of Wall Street, resigned in twenty twenty four only become to become the co-chair of the litigation practice at Jenner and Block, where he represents white collar criminals. Meanwhile, Wachovia laundered three hundred and seventy eight billion dollars in Mexican cartel money. The fine was one hundred and sixty million. No one went to prison. Zero individuals went to prison. JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo, all caught, all paid civil fines. Zero individuals went to prison. Six, and this applies to all of them. The reason this happened to them and not Jamie Diamond, every one of these six men was promoting peaceful, voluntary, peer-to-peer exchange of value outside of the central banking system. Ian's Bitcoin embassy, Keone and Williams privacy wallet, Roman Storm's privacy protocol, Roman Sterlingov's mixer. It wasn't even his mixer. Actually, that was a case of mistaken identity. Ray's peer-to-peer marketplace for the unbanked. Tools that let one human being transact with another anywhere on this planet without asking for permission from a bank, a regulator, or a government. Seven, and then there's Roman Sterlingoff. Roman is the canary in the coal mine. Roman was convicted on one tool called Chainalysis Reactor, a black box, a piece of proprietary forensic software that no defendant is allowed to inspect, no expert is allowed to audit, and no juror is allowed to question. The FBI walks into a courtroom, points at a Chainalysis report, and that report is treated as the truth. A rival forensics firm called Chain Argos filed a brief with the DC Circuit and called all three of Chain Alice's core methodologies, quote, fundamentally unscientific. The FBI's lead expert admitted on the stand that the analysis he used to identify Sterling off was made up solely for this case. No peer review. They found no communication. They found no witness. that had ever spoken to him. And Tor Eklund, his lawyer, told the appellate court that this is the most insane thing in the entire war. He KYC'd his account when he didn't even have to. He was the only name they could find. He's in jail because he followed the rules. Twelve and a half years, three hundred and ninety-five billion dollars in forfeiture, forty-one months in a cage before he even stood trial. Three weeks ago, FBI Director Kash Patel had a fireside chat in Las Vegas, and the title was, Code is Free Speech, End the War on Bitcoin. It was laughable. A lot of us were there actually expecting and hoping that he was gonna announce some pardons, but I guess code is free speech in Las Vegas, in a federal courtroom in Manhattan, code is forty years in a cage. So I just wanted to provide the overview. These are fundamental points that apply to all of these cases and apply to all of us. This goes well beyond crypto and goes right to the heart of the rule of law and anyone who talks about or promotes freedom. Hello, everyone. I'm Roman Storm. I'm a software engineer and I help build Ornithocash. It's a non-custodial decentralized cryptocurrency privacy tool. In twenty twenty three, the Department of Justice came after me. They charged me with conspiracy of money laundering, sanctions violations and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business because some hackers allegedly used Ornithocash. At most, they were a small fraction of its users. So just to make it very clear, I wasn't charged with hacking anyone. I wasn't charged with stealing anyone's funds. I was charged for writing open source code. The code that anyone can still use today. So in July, I went to trial. The jury never heard a single piece of evidence that I communicated with any criminals or helped with any hack. Not one. Because I didn't. And yet the government still wants to retry me for allegedly conspiring to engage in money laundering and sanctions violations because they failed to convict me the first time on those charges. Think about what that means. If the prosecutors get their way, they set a dangerous precedent for every software engineer, every privacy advocate, every open source publisher in this country. They're trying to make software engineers liable when criminals misuse the tools they build. This directly contradicts past Supreme Court rulings, established legal precedent, and current government agency guidance. So if you want to learn more about this case and support my legal battle, please visit freeromanstorm.com. Thank you. we represent roman sterling off in the federal case united states the roman sterling off as you may know roman was recently convicted of running the uh bitcoin mixer bitcoin fog and sentenced to twelve and a half years in prison and he maintains his innocence to this day and um we just finished oral arguments in this appeal in dc and are waiting the decision The Roman Sterling has been convicted of operating Bitcoin fog. It was a cryptocurrency mixer that was available on the tour network from about two thousand and eleven through the government set it down in two thousand and twenty one. The problem is that the government introduced absolutely no evidence that Roman Sterling I've ever operated it. No direct evidence, no communications, no eyewitness testimony, nothing. No servers, no logs, no nothing, like nothing. The entire case is circumstantial. For the best that we can tell, it looks like Roman did an early transaction with somebody who really did set up Bitcoin fog. But because he was the only person who KYC'd his Mt. Gox account back in two thousand and eleven, he became the target of this investigation. In other words, because he was a Boy Scout in two thousand eleven, like seriously, like this guy's only crime is that he got into Bitcoin early. Right. And this is why everybody should be concerned about this case, because what happened here is the government we think happened. The government just traced saw a peer to peer transaction with the people we think started Bitcoin Fog and then backward traced on the chain. And because Roman's name was the only name that they could find anywhere, because he was such a Boy Scout and he's KYC-ing, like Mike said, his Mt. Gox account in, what is that, like, two thousand eleven, two thousand twelve. They're like, it's him. It's him. So they launched this massive, like, ten year case, you know, like, where they investigate him. What, they put him under surveillance, Mike, right in Miami, two thousand seventeen. You know, they're surveilling his internet traffic. No evidence he operates Bitcoin. Fuck. They surveil his servers in Romania where they say, oh, those are the hidden Bitcoin fog servers, except they turn out that they're not the hidden Bitcoin fog servers. They arrest him with all of his laptops, computers, like three terabytes hard drives, like his diary, his notes, ten years of notes, all this stuff. When they arrest him in April, twenty seven, twenty twenty one at LAX, it has a spreadsheet of all his internet passwords. Nothing in there about Bitcoin fog. And with this huge lack of evidence against Roman Sterling, the government relied almost completely upon two unscientific tests that they came up with for the purpose of this case. The first one was an IP overlap analysis. Basically, they said that Roman operated Bitcoin Fog because he logged into the same IP address that some of the email addresses that were affiliated with Bitcoin Fog logged into in the same temporal proximity, so around the same time. Now, this is another reason why you should absolutely be concerned about this case, because think about how when you log into a server or whatever, you're sharing the same IP address as thousands or tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of other people. They are saying he's the same. person as the operator of bitcoin fog because he used the same ip address of somebody they think was operating bitcoin within a few minutes or hours or days of somebody it's insane right and and the other thing that's insane about it what it is consistent with is if you're doing a peer-to-peer transaction with somebody in a cafe or somewhere and you send the money and then they're going to log in and check to see if they got the bitcoin But that's it. And that's what they say. They say in two thousand eleven, he registered the domain name for Bitcoin Funk. That's that's really the only piece of evidence of him, they say, of him operating it, besides saying he was was an Akamishito Amidato, right? Yeah, that's correct. Now, the second piece of evidence that the government introduced came from a company called Chainalysis, which I'm sure some of you have heard from before. Chainalysis, they do blockchain tracing. None of their tracing techniques have ever been scientifically verified. They didn't know their error rates, they didn't know their false positive rates, they didn't know their false negative rates. They didn't meet a single one of the factors that are outlined by the Supreme Court case Daubert that determines the threshold that evidence needs to meet in order for it to be introduced as expert testimony at trial. It didn't meet a single one of those factors, yet it was allowed to be brought into court. It can use against Roman Sterlinghoff. Mind you, despite these tests that they did with chain analysis and the IP overlap analysis, None of the expert witnesses even identified Roman as the operator of Bitcoin Fog. Even with their own expert testimony, the government couldn't get somebody to target Roman as the operator of Bitcoin Fog. And I think that attests to just how ludicrous this case is against them. Because everything that I've seen, everything that Tor has seen, everything that anybody involved with this case has, when they really get into the evidence, look at it. it shows the Roman Sterling off. So now we have an innocent person sitting in prison and Tor and I just went down to Washington, D.C. to conduct oral arguments on this case and we brought up these issues. We brought up, first of all, Venue. Why was he on trial in D.C.? He had never set foot in D.C. None of the servers were in D.C. There were no customers in D.C. Venue is completely inappropriate in Washington, D.C. The second issue that we brought up was the Daubert challenges to this expert witness testimony. And then there was a whole list of other issues. They tried to bring in the prejudicial evidence. They tried to say he was a child. They tried to say he was a child pornographer, even though it wasn't a single piece of evidence on any of his stuff anywhere or anywhere in this guy's entire life. of like any involvement in child pornography right but like what they say happened is like nine hundred eighty dollars out of four hundred million from not going into bitcoin fog and being laundered but that came out of bitcoin fog went to this korean child porn site that got shut down And so then they're like, we're going to bring in child porn. We're going to tell the jury about child porn. Even when we were up on appeal, the federal DC Court of Appeals didn't like that. Actually, one of the judges said to the government, why did you bring this in? why did you bring this in? This case isn't about this, right? So... To be honest, the appellate judge seemed quite disappointed with the prosecution for doing that. For doing that. But that doesn't mean you're going to win because there's only an eight percent reversal rate on appeal. But, you know, I mean, there's a lot to this case, but to me, After, like, sixteen years of representing people accused of computer crime by the federal government, I've never had a case where the government has just, like, arrested somebody with all their devices and searched through them completely and not found a single piece of corroborating evidence. their theory, like zero. I've never had a case where there were no eyewitnesses or victims who testified to seeing the person commit the crime. What's scary about this case, and it's kind of Kafkaesque, it's a little bit out of Orwell, is that everything is just this forensic software that there's no validation for and everyone's buying into it because it's so impressive sounding. and the judge is letting it in, and you've got the FBI. And this poor kid, man, he just got railroaded from it. I just don't think he did it. And this is just really scary. And so it's up on appeal right now. You can get more information, what, at freeroman.org, Mike? FREEROMAN.org. We can also be reached by email at torr at torreklin.com or michael at torreklin.com. And we'd be happy to talk to anybody who's interested in supporting Roman's position here. Yeah. And, you know, this is just part of a broader sort of attack on crypto liberties. And I just think financial freedom and financial privacy in general. And, you know, Roman is just one of the prisoners in the war of crypto. We've got Roman Storm, you know, we've got the Samurai guys. We've got, who else am I leaving? Ian Freeman. Who else am I leaving out of there? Like... You got Samurai Wallet, Tornado Cash. Tornado Cash. Just, you know, and we need to push back against this because ultimately this is a political issue. And it's the way certain politicians view cryptocurrency, like, you know, Elizabeth Warren thinks it's the Antichrist because she's a banking cartel person. Anyhow, thank you for your support. Thank you for your time and free Roman, all of them. I want to thank Bitcoin.com, and Bitcoin.com is proud to bring our next speaker. All right. Okay. Good evening, everybody. My name is Roman Sterlingov. I want to thank you all for looking at this case and recognizing the injustices. This is my sixth year being locked away from everyone I love, losing friends, family, and the best years of my life. If you think it's hard to wrap your head around the absurdity and the fact that something like this can still happen in a country like the U.S., you're not alone. It's still really hard for me to believe in the absurdity of it, too. I was just a Bitcoin early adopter. Back in two thousand ten, I was hanging out with some of the first people that understood Bitcoin before the rest of the society. We were trading it, we were educating each other about Bitcoin, about this whole new ecosystem of apps and technologies. For me, the coolest thing was just to be a part of it. I was hanging out with people much smarter than me, having crazy conversations. But then, almost ten years later, I find myself being dragged through years of jails, alongside murderers and rapists, just as a preparation to then finally see through weeks of trial where they keep showing me these alphanumeric strings of Bitcoin addresses and asking if I remember this or that transaction from ten years ago. Then when I say that I was trading Bitcoin and I don't remember every hexadecimal transaction number, they say that I'm being evasive. They start asking why I was online at the same hour as some other account they're looking for from ten years ago. Try to explain that as anybody who bought or sold Bitcoin online knows, this is just how it works. You send the transaction and as soon as you've made it, you send the other person a message so that they can confirm it and they send you the other part of the deal. But it doesn't matter because they have already decided. They say it was close enough. They now consider me the same person or a co-conspirator at least. Then I sit through endless series of just purely surreal episodes, like when a government expert takes a picture out of an Amazon e-book, a PDF that I had on my e-reader, a picture of a chat window with a joke about money laundering, and they cut it out of the e-book and they show it to the jury saying that I wrote it. They say it has to be me because the joke mentions a beard and they have pictures of me where I also have a beard. They build a whole new identity for me out of these statistical coincidences and educated guesses and hidden closed source heuristics. And then they keep talking about all the things that sound scary if you're not into technology, like Raspberry Pi minicomputers that I had or VPNs or command line interfaces or a four G modem that I also had. These are not crimes. A Raspberry Pi is a thirty dollar minicomputer that kids use to learn programming. But to an average person, they sound like evil spells. But you know, some of this absurdity was actually explained shortly thereafter. The court said something remarkable on the record. They openly said that my sentence was for general deterrence. That just means in everyday language that they're doing it to make an example. They were sentencing me to scare you. They were using me as a warning sign to the entire crypto industry. If you look for privacy, if you touch Bitcoin in ways they don't like, this is what happens. So you see, I'm not even special. I'm just an example. There's no other way to explain even just the sheer disparity, the different standards. I was sentenced to twelve and a half years in federal prison. Let me put that into perspective. For example, Jianping Zhao, and I'm sorry if I mispronounce it, the founder of Binance, which was a... This call is from a federal prison. At the time, it was the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. It pleaded guilty to money laundering violations. Now, this is all according to the prosecutors. God knows what really was happening, but at least according to them, the violations included facilitating illegal materials, drug trafficking, terrorist financing. It had several mixers, many times larger than anything even alluded to in this case. He got four months and then was pardoned shortly thereafter. Then there are many examples of other people who steal from hundreds of victims, who have actual victims, who endanger lives, who commit actual fraud. They get less time than what I received. Then I read about the Blanche memo, about the cryptocurrency policy. how the new administration says that mixers in general shouldn't even be prosecuted for the crimes of their individual users. That's before even talking about the attribution and all the other issues in my prosecution. So here we are. And in any case, I just want to say thank you to all the people who have supported me, regular people like you probably, the lawyers, the journalists, my family, the Bitcoin community at large that hasn't forgotten me. We've seen that it's not all bad, that in some cases we can right the wrongs and injustices. We know that it's possible. Just need your support now. Thank you. I want to thank Bitcoin.com and Bitcoin.com is proud to bring our next speaker here. This is rubber hits the road for this event i'm going to ask you for two things for your you know what you can do one scan that qr code right over there sign the petition to free my business partner ian freeman two financially support lauren rodriguez and her family during this highly expensive defense that they didn't ask for, that is uncalled for and ought to be illegal. Lauren Rodriguez. Hello. What if one of the most dangerous things you can do in America today is build a tool that protects people's privacy? Simply providing the same level of privacy we've come to expect in the legacy system, but for Bitcoin. Creating neutral tools is now treated as criminal. Can we really claim to have liberty? It's been over five months since I dropped my husband, Keone Rodriguez, off at the federal prison camp in Morgantown, West Virginia. He'll spend the next five years there. Five years of our lives, our hopes and our dreams stolen. That day dropping my husband off at prison was one of the hardest days of my life. It was more devastating than the pre-dawn raid on our home. Most people assume that having your house raided by the FBI would be traumatizing. Being awoken by the sound of a loudspeaker blaring to come out with your hands raised, the house surrounded by agents, laser sights on our chest from rifles pointed at our hearts, a drone flown through the front door, being handcuffed and separated from each other. But it wasn't. The true anguish I felt didn't come until I had to leave my husband at prison and drive away. That moment signified that there wasn't going to be justice in this case. It was the final nail in the coffin, proof that the American justice system can get it so profoundly wrong and that ordinary people like us have almost no recourse. My husband, Keone, and his co-founder of Samurai Wallet, William Hill, are both sitting in federal prison. Not because they hurt someone, defrauded anyone, or stole anything, but for building open source, non-custodial Bitcoin privacy tools that are still being used by thousands of people around the world today. Keone and Bill built Samurai Wallet as a tool for activists, dissidents, and average people who are seeking transactional privacy on an open ledger where anyone with an internet connection can learn basically everything about your finances. Not for the purpose of facilitating crime or aiding criminals. It was defensive technology. For a world increasingly plagued by physical violence and extortion for Bitcoin holders, attacks that in some cases have even resulted in death. They wrote code to stay within the guidelines put out by FinCEN, the regulator in charge of enforcing these laws. FinCEN even told the prosecutor six months before indictment that Samurai was not in violation. It didn't matter. This case, like so many others, is textbook lawfare. It represents a weaponized DOJ targeting developers of legal privacy software in order to stifle innovation. It ultimately leaves everyday users and freedom fighters living under repressive regimes more vulnerable. This case and all the financial and emotional havoc it's wrecked in our lives is bigger than just Keone and Bill and our families. It's about who they'll come for next. When the government can imprison people, not for anything they've done, but for what someone else might do with their code, none of us are truly free. The implications stretch far beyond Bitcoin or code. They threaten the very ideals of innovation, free expression, and personal liberty. Creators of VPN, tours, encrypted messaging apps could all be next. Your right to use freedom technology is at stake. Bill and Keone now have joined an ever-growing list of people, many represented here tonight, brilliant minds and peaceful warriors caged for challenging the state's monopoly on power. This year marks the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of America's founding. It's a time that should fill all of us with pride. Yet it's also a time of painful reckoning. Because while we celebrate our nation's birth, we cannot ignore the slow erosion and the quiet death of the very principles that made it exceptional. Liberty, equality, natural rights, and the rule of law. These founding ideas will keep being eroded unless we refuse to let cases like Keone and Bill's and all the others spoken about here tonight slip quietly past our social consciousness. I need your help. We can't stay silent. I need you guys to stand up and call out the profound injustices done to these men. For our case, you can please go and visit BillandKeone.org to learn more about their case, sign calls for a presidential pardon and donate to the cause. Your voice does matter. Code should not be a crime. Free Samurai. Thank you guys for listening. What Lauren didn't say is this is incredibly expensive, her defense. And not everybody got in like my business partner at twenty seven cents on Bitcoin. Now, Ian gave away almost all of his cryptocurrency, but his court fees have been taken care of. But that doesn't make the justice of this any better. He still sits in federal prison. We started Free Talk Live in two thousand and two. We were the really only libertarian radio program of any size on the radio. And we were on for twenty years. We were the number one political podcast while Joe Rogan was still feeding people fish eyes. We were the first media in the world to discuss Bitcoin on December the twenty eighth. Twenty ten. The head developer of Bitcoin met with us in January twenty eleven. He explained to us how money could be backed by math instead of backed by gold. And we became the launch point. For the multistage rocket that shot Bitcoin into the stratosphere. Ian Freeman was instrumental in the launch of the Free State Project, the launch of Bitcoin, the launch of cryptocurrency. And we also founded an organization called Bitcoin Not Bombs. We weren't the only ones. I mean, we gave some money to the guys who founded the organization called Bitcoin Not Bombs because we believe so thoroughly in the idea that if you back money with value the politicians can't just print it that this will affect the war machine in in the united states government wanted to prosecute its war it asked the american people to grow gardens save your nylons and buy war bonds in a scant sixty years later that's nothing in the course of history When George Bush Jr. was asked, how can we support America in the war on terror? He said, go shopping. Something fundamental changed in the money in this country. Something fundamental changed in how war was prosecuted. The amount of debt currently compared to GDP, makes us look like we're in the middle of fighting Nazis.