Tether’s general counsel, Stuart Hoegner, has stated that the company has decided to support Peter McCormack in his defence against Craig Wright.
In fact, in April 2019 Wright sued McCormack for publicly challenging his claims of being Satoshi Nakamoto.
As a result, McCormack has been accused of defamation and will have to defend himself before the UK High Court.
Hoegner has written on Twitter:
“Craig Wright’s claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto have been rejected by many.
Tether also rejects them. Wright has had myriad opportunities to prove that he is Satoshi and has not definitively done so”.
Then he added:
“We are therefore pleased to stand behind Peter McCormack in his defence of litigation brought by Wright before the High Court in the United Kingdom. Peter has been sued for libel”.
He also mentioned the costly legal costs that McCormack would have to incur, but he did not explicitly promise to finance them.
However, he has made it clear that they will support him throughout the litigation, which is likely to be very long and described as “frivolous and vexatious”.
For Wright, the lawsuit against McCormack could turn out to be a boomerang, because it is now clear that he has failed to prove that he is Satoshi, as evidenced by the outcome of the lawsuit brought against him by Dave Kleiman’s brother in the South Florida Court.
Given that at this point it seems very unlikely that he will succeed, it will be difficult to convince the other court that McCormack has defamed him by publicly claiming that his allegations are false.
Moreover, Tether’s support, especially if it were also economic, could help McCormack to defend himself in an attempt to prove that he did not defame Wright, but only denied a lie.
However, from a strictly legal point of view, the question remains absolutely open and it will be the judges who determine who is right and who is wrong.
