Key XRP documents will not be withheld
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) attempt to exclude some internal email communications from its case against Ripple has been denied by a federal court in the United States.
Federal Judge Sarah Netburn ordered the Securities and Exchange Commission to turn over drafts and emails connected to a 2018 lecture delivered by William Hinman, a former director of the Commission’s Division of Corporate Finance, in response to a request from the public.
Hinman said during his lecture that Ethereum (ETH) was not a security.The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Ripple in December 2020, stating that the firm offered XRP as an unregistered securities, a stance that the agency continues to hold.
Individual accusations were also brought against Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and the company’s co-founder, Chris Larsen, by the regulatory authority. When Netburn originally ordered the SEC to turn over the emails in January, the SEC filed a lawsuit to overturn the decision.
While Netburn dismissed the SEC’s request for a reconsideration of the ruling, she did offer a clarification to the order.
According to the judge:
It is unclear, as previously discussed, whether any of the communications about, edits to, or comments on drafts of the Speech were related to specific deliberations facing the agency, or whether any of these communications, edits, or comments on drafts of the Speech formed a ‘essential link’ in those deliberations. According to what I’ve learned from reviewing the papers and talking to people who work at the agencies, communications regarding revisions to the Speech, as well as the edits themselves, were not included in discussions about how to convey agency policy.
If there are any communications between employees discussing the Speech in the context of how it implicates other, unrelated agency deliberations—rather than discussions regarding the substance of the speech—the SEC may request permission to redact such communications from the final output. The sort of communication intended is described in remark 12 on page 6 of the Speech draft in Document J, which was submitted for in camera review, in order to provide some assistance to the SEC.”
The “Document J” that Judge Netburn refers to is not accessible to the public.
