You're wrong that they are supporting illegal dark type uses. The team has background in the American intelligence community. Some people are saying their aim is to push toward a backdoored or monitorable supposed darknet.
For what it's worth, there is a Forbes article that supports this claim: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/03/16/openb...
"Brian Hoffman, a former lead associate for cybersecurity at Edward Snowden's old employer Booz Allen Hamilton"
tor was developed by the US military initially, as well