State of Crypto: IRS Departures

The IRS, alongside many other regulators, has been pretty active in the crypto world over recent years. On Friday, two directors left.

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Over 20,000 IRS employees accepted deferred resignation offers made by the Donald Trump administration, including two directors tasked with overseeing digital assets rulemaking.
Raj Mukherjee and Seth Wilks went on paid administrative leave Saturday, though individuals familiar with the situation told CoinDesk that their departures should not indicate any change in the IRS’ approach to crypto rules.
Wilks, the IRS’ executive director of digital asset strategy and development, and Mukherjee, the executive director of the digital assets office, accepted deferred resignation offers and left the IRS on Friday, two individuals told CoinDesk.

They joined thousands of other IRS employees who accepted the offer, which puts them on paid administrative leave until September.

Both of CoinDesk’s sources said Wilks and Mukherjee left ahead of expected widespread layoffs at the IRS.

Read more here.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys in the Department of Justice’s case against the developers of Samourai Wallet filed a joint memo asking the federal judge overseeing the case to pause it for a few weeks while the DOJ considers a request from the defense to drop it entirely.

An attorney for Roman Storm, asked if the Tornado Cash developer’s team had made a similar request, declined to comment.

This same week, a federal judge ruled that the U.S. Treasury Department cannot sanction Tornado Cash again, saying the Office of Foreign Asset Control did “not suggest they will not sanction Tornado Cash again, and they may seek to ‘reenact precisely the same [designation] in the future.'”

Last month, Leah Moushey, an attorney with Miller & Chevalier, told CoinDesk that the judge may decide to reject OFAC’s argument that the case was moot because of previous cases where agencies tried to keep the ability to redesignate someone after a court case was resolved.

The judge indeed appeared to buy into that view in his ruling.

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