Court Rejected Virgil Griffith’s Motion To Dismiss: Report

The New York court rejected Virgil Griffith’s motion to dismiss after he was charged with violating North Korean sanctions and he will face trial later this year as we can see more in our latest ETH news.

Virgil Griffith was charged with violating North Korean sanctions and he will face trial later this year. A New York federal judge rejected the Ethereum Developer’s motion while Griffith claimed his speech at the conference in Pyongyang was protected by the First Amendment. He will stand trial in September 2021.

The court rejected his motion to dismiss the charges over the allegations that the former ETH developer assisted North Korea to bypass sanctions that were imposed by the US government. Griffith claimed in his motion that his speech at the Blockchain and Crypto Conference in 2019 in Pyongyang was protected by the First Amendment’s right to free speech. However, judge P. Kevin Castel from the Southern District of New York thinks otherwise.

The court date for September 2021 was set last month and with the ruling, it is now confirmed that Griffith will go to jury trial. The developer traveled to North Korea back in 2019 despite being denied permission from the US authorities and as per the immigration rules, no US citizen can visit the country as a tourist as all entries are only granted in “limited circumstances.” Soon after the conference in North Korea, Griffith posted on Facebook that he will look for academic or tech friends that are interested in traveling to North Korea saying that the local authorities asked him for a recommendation of people that want to come to their country.

During the hearing, Judge Castel cited text messages that Griffith sent to his friends before the conference stating that there’s intent to travel to North Korea and to set up an ETH node:

 “It’ll help them circumvent the current sanctions on them.”

He was arrested in 2019 on charges of conspiracy to assist North Korea by providing the technical information that could be used to help the county launder money and evade sanctions. Since the former ETH Foundation engineer fought the case, he is still denying the charges against him.  His defenders like Vitalik Buterin insisted that Griffith gave a harmless presentation about the technology solely based on the publicly available information.