by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack
SDNY COURTHOUSE, July 31 – The recent crypto legal drama is sure to launch law review debates, and Inner City Press might join join them. But for now this is about real estate, or really, the small circle in which this cycle is being fought.
Judge Analisa Torres, who ruled on SEC v. Ripple, has her courtroom on the 15th floor of 500 Pearl Street, the Daniel Patrick Moynahan federal courthouse. She ruled standing at a music stand, famously on the conditions in the MDC Brooklyn jail, often on drug cases in South Bronx housing projects where a community room is named after her parents. Her XRP ruling set ripples and rightly so.
But one floor down on 14 is the courtroom of Judge Jed S. Rakoff. He is by all accounts better known, the author of books for example on false confessions, often railing against the US Sentencing Guidelines and mass incarceration.
While cited as a Renaissance man, he is not infrequently reversed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals just across Pearl Street in 40 Foley Square.
Not that it seems to bother Judge Rakoff. He seems to revel in it. The point here is that his ruling in SEC v. Terraform Labs Pte Ltd. et al., 23-cv-1346 is not necessarily, simply because he is the author, any more likely than Analisa Torres' to be upheld by the Second Circuit.
Then there are the lawyers. Much was made of Ripple, for the SEC's expected appeal, hiring former SDNY prosecutor Daniel Zolkind. When Inner City Press first came to daily cover SDNY, Zolkind was the lead counsel on the prosecution of UN briber Ng Sap Seng. Now he's on this civil crypto appeal.
This as the current SDNY prosecutors try to disqualify another former colleague, Emil Bove, from representing Yvette Wang, the co-defendant of Miles Guo Wengui Kwok, whom they've also charged with crypto fraud. That criminal case is also before Judge Torres.
It's a small, small world and Inner City Press will continue to closely cover it. More analysis on Substack here - and yet more on Patreon here
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