[irv]

I completely agree he shouldn't have been running this service in the first place. I also agree it's a bit late to find some principles when you've been happily complying with these requests in the past.

But! The period you describe as him stonewalling the DOJ, he claims he was talking to them every day while trying to find competent legal representation.

Now, this sounds like something I would want to do if the nature of the request were different from the previous ones. (whether it was technically different or just the fact he had a personal interest in the account as you suggest doesn't really matter, just that for whatever reason it wasn't to be handled in the previous manner)

I certainly believe it was difficult for him to find good representation when he was under a gag order.

So I have some limited sympathy here; the DOJ are forcing him to move to their timeline, and he's scrambling to find good lawyers.

I think we can say he was happy to sell out users or that he was fraudulently labelling his service as secure, while acknowledging the fact that he was trying to seek legal advice at the same time.

[mreiland]

The obvious counter-argument is that simply talking to them isn't enough. Sure, it's a "period of silence", but that could very well mean figurative silence rather than literal silence.

He could have spent every single conversation putting them off rather than working with them, which is what's implied by the 'literal silence' anyway.

We don't exactly know what was said in those conversations, so it's hard to know whether he was silent or not. What we do know is that they weren't very fruitful for the DOJ, so it's not outlandish to assume he was simply putting them off.

[tptacek]

The 4th Circuit disagrees, and found that Levison did not communicate with DOJ "every day while trying to find competent legal representation". See page 10-12.