• Ira Kleiman’s legal representation responds to the request of the self-proclaimed inventor of Bitcoin for attorney/client privilege.
• Kleiman’s legal team introduces petition to add new legal counsel to its team of lawyers.

Legal representation by Bitcoin’s self-proclaimed inventor, Craig Wright, introduced a document on Feb. 11 to withhold evidence requested by the court. In the document, Wright’s lawyers argue that more than 10,000 documents that could be evidence are protected by the attorney/client confidentiality privilege. The documents Wright refuses to hand over should contain critical information to prove the identity of the real Satoshi Nakamoto.

Now, his counterpart’s lawyers filed a response in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida denying the allegations made by Wright’s legal team.

Defying the supposed privilege of the self-proclaimed inventor of Bitcoin

The document was introduced on February 19 of this year. The team of Ira Kleiman, brother of Wright’s former partner, refutes the arguments presented by Wright and presents its own points to show that the privilege requested by the defendant is not valid.

The first argument presented by Kleiman’s representation is related to the effort it would take to gather the documents. Wright’s defense argued that gathering all the documents would involve contacting more than 81 parties, 67 lawyers and 17 foreign companies. In addition, Wright claimed that releasing the documents could indirectly violate Australian law. Under Australian law, a person who has confidential information about a company cannot disclose it, even after the company is dissolved.

Kleiman’s lawyers state the following:

First, this Court should reject the privilege claims for reasons independent of whether a company’s privilege survives its dissolution. Defendant has never identified the companies for which he is asserting privilege but asks the Court to accept that this represents an undue burden.

Further, Kleiman’s representation alleges that Wright applies attorney/client privilege for his convenience. This conduct, the document continues, shows that the defendant is avoiding his responsibility and prolonging the case unnecessarily:

He refuses to reach out to any of the “at least 65 individual attorneys” for the companies, but he did obtain a declaration from an Australian lawyer about Australian law. Injecting new and irrelevant arguments like this, while failing to provide straight answers to simple questions is par for the course

The second argument presented by Kleiman’s representation is the lack of legal precedent. According to the document, there is no precedent in the Florida jurisdiction for attorney/client privilege to be maintained after the dissolution of a company. The document states that doing so in this case would undermine the principle of attorney-client privilege.

In a second document, introduced yesterday, February 21, Kleiman’s representation asks that attorney Stephen Lagos be admitted as part of his legal team. Lagos is an attorney licensed to practice in New York State and, if the petition is approved, would enter the case as legal counsel after paying a $75 fee. It remains to be seen how the Wright team will react to these developments and what input will be provided by Kleiman’s new attorney.

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