Knowing how hostile the U.S. government is towards cryptocurrency, privacy, and its geopolitical rivals, the ways in which they marketed their service were often incredibly foolish. If they were going to be this arrogant they should have made sure to develop the project in total anonymity and located in a jurisdiction with more respect towards individuals' right to privacy and financial autonomy.

The overall case against them has significant flaws. An offhanded remark made on Twitter should not be the reason why they spend decades in prison. Russian oligarchs have far better ways of laundering money through traditional investments and banking institutions. While those comments weren’t very tasteful, it is not enough evidence of a conspiracy to commit money laundering or evade sanctions. It would be different if they had actually been in direct communication with oligarchs, which is not the case.

The indictment documents against Samourai state that “KEONNE RODRIGUEZ and WILLIAM LONERGAN HILL, the defendants,
owned, controlled, managed, and supervised Samourai, which was engaged in the business of transferring funds on behalf of the public." That is not how Whirlpool works but prosecutors are counting on jurors being too ignorant to understand that a non-custodial service does not meet the definition of a money transmitting business. Even some forum members who have many years of experience with Bitcoin did not understand that the coordinator never holds any user funds.

It will be difficult to win against a rigged justice system, but with a strong defense some of the charges might get dropped, which might limit the harm they want to inflict on privacy providers and Bitcoin users.