Presidential Intervention
President Donald Trump confirmed Monday he is personally reviewing the case of Keonne Rodriguez, the Samourai Wallet co-founder sentenced to five years in federal prison last month. Speaking at a White House press briefing, Trump addressed the “Free Samourai” campaign directly: “I’ve heard about it. I’ll look at it.” The acknowledgment immediately triggered a rally in privacy-focused assets, with the sector broadly outperforming a flat Bitcoin (-0.6%).
Rodriguez, who is scheduled to surrender to custody this week, responded to the news on X: “Your continued noise is working.”
The 5-Year Precedent
The review targets a November ruling where Rodriguez (5 years) and CTO William Lonergan Hill (4 years) were convicted of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. Prosecutors successfully argued that Samourai’s non-custodial “Whirlpool” service laundered $237 million in illicit funds, a figure the defense disputed as a misclassification of privacy software as financial transmission. The court also ordered the forfeiture of roughly $6.4 million in assets and the seizure of the Samourai domain.
We’ll take a look. I don’t know anything about it, but we’ll take a look.
Institutional Context
The potential pardon aligns with the administration’s aggressive dismantling of the previous DOJ’s “Crypto Enforcement Framework.” Trump has already issued executive clemency to Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht in January and former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao in October, establishing a pattern of intervening in cases where code deployment is prosecuted as financial crime. Legal experts suggest a pardon here would effectively nullify the precedent that non-custodial software developers are liable for user behavior, a shift that could force the SEC and DOJ to abandon similar cases against Tornado Cash developers.
