Craig Wright Has To Provide The Bitcoin Tulip Trust Private Keys Until March 12th

The Craig Wright versus Kleiman legal case is far from over as the presiding judge has recently rejected Wright’s attempt to claim multiple privileges regarding the long-awaited private keys of the Satoshi’s 1 million Bitcoins, worth around $8 billion.

Craig Wright claimed in December that he would receive the keys needed to access the Bitcoin via a bonded courier on January 1, 2020. The court then gave him until February 3 to provide evidence that he has gotten access to the funds.

Wright Seeks Privileges

With February gone and the private keys still nowhere to be found, Wright, perhaps, thought the next logical step was to claim attorney-client and spousal privileges in court.

According to Florida law, “a client has a privilege to refuse to disclose and to prevent any other person from disclosing the contents of confidential communications when such other person learned of the communications because they were made in the rendition of legal services to the client.”

Similarly, the spousal privilege in Florida states that “a spouse has a privilege during and after the marital relationship to refuse to disclose and to prevent another from disclosing, communications which were intended to be made in confidence between the spouses while they were husband and wife.”

Wright claimed that the communications between him, his wife, and the bonded courier were privileged, and thus, it means that he has the burden to request for both attorney-client and spousal privileges.

Despite submitting sworn declarations identifying two trusts – Tulip Trust I and Tulip Trust II – in March last year, Craig Wright provided a deed for a third trust – Tulip Trust III – on January 6, 2020.

The self-proclaimed Bitcoin founder said that his wife was the one who dealt with the legal counsel for Tulip Trust 3, and she received the encrypted file containing the bitcoin list, which makes her the trustee. She then provided him with the document.

Using LinkedIn Profile As Evidence

The legal counsel for Tulip Trust III is reportedly one Denis Bosire Mayaka, from Kenya. To establish an attorney-client relationship between Mr. Mayaka and the trustee for Tulip Trust 3, Craig Wright, submitted a sworn, un-notarized, declaration of Mayaka, which reads:

“I am lawyer [sic] and obtained my bachelor of law degree in 2007 from Moi University in Kenya.”

In what could be the most bizarre evidence ever, Wright further presented a printout copy of Mayaka’s LinkedIn profile to show the court that Mayaka, indeed, has a Bachelor’s degree in Law.

Judge: Wright Is Fond Of Providing Fake Documents

Unfortunately for Wright, Judge Bruce E Reinhart did not buy into his objections. The judge rejected the privilege claims for many reasons, saying that Craig Wright has been providing the court with several forged documents in the litigation.

“I decline to rely on this kind of document, which could easily have been generated by anyone with word processing software and a pen,” Judge Bruce added, while also rejecting the spousal privilege claims because the communications were not intended to remain confidential.

The presiding judge further said that he disregards Mayaka’s declaration as it was not adequately authenticated. There is also a lack of evidence and proof of communication that Mayaka was the legal counsel to the trustee of Tulip Trust III, the judge added.

With all of Wright’s objections overruled, Judge Bruce gave him until March 12 to provide the requested documents in court.

It would be interesting to see if Craig Wright will finally provide the private keys to the 1 million Bitcoins in two days or if he would come up with another diversion, as always.