- In December 2022, SEC had asked the court to keep the controversial Hinman speech undisclosed.
- Ripple filed a motion against SEC’s motion and asked the court to refuse to seal the documents.
- The crypto firm said that the documents are “judicial documents”.
In a filing of Ripple’s response, the crypto firm has asked the court to deny the US SEC’s motion to seal the controversial Hinman documents.
Ripple’s response came after the SEC filed an omnibus motion in December 2022 which urged the court to keep the controversial documents undisclosed. SEC argued that they were protected by attorney-client privilege and that bringing the disputable documents out in public would affect the openness of SEC policy deliberations.
Hinman speech documents are emails and other SEC statements related to the draft of Bill Hinman’s contentious 2018 speech. In the speech, the former SEC director of corporation finance had openly claimed that Bitcoin and Ethereum are not securities. Ripple said that SEC’s suggesting that the Hinman Speech Documents were not judicial documents is incorrect and further added:
Defendants relied on these documents in their briefs in support of their summary judgment arguments, meaning that they ‘may have the tendency to influence the Court’s decision’ on the summary judgment motions.
Ripple also acknowledged that Judge Analisa Torres had initially claimed that the documents might be invalid. But the judge’s views were based on an incomplete record. At that time, Ripple had not reviewed the documents to form their arguments about how relevant the documents could be with respect to relevance to the SEC’s claims.
Despite not being considered in the court’s summary judgment decision, Ripple said that the documents are “judicial documents”. Thus, they must not be sealed unless the reasons are convincing enough. Recently, the CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, said that he is “cautiously optimistic” about a breakthrough for crypto regulation in 2023.
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