XRP Lawsuit: Government Watchdog Pushes To Unseal Hinman Documents

By Kevin • February 24, 2023 9:13 pm • Comments

As the lawsuit between Ripple and the SEC drags on, many speculators are starting to think that the case may end up going all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Third-party outsiders are also trying to intervene in the cast as much as possible in order to help the court make a decision sooner.

For example, Forbes journalist Dr. Rosylyn Layton has recently submitted a motion to intervene in the lawsuit in order to request for public access to the Hinman speech documents.

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This was done because Layton believes that the documents contain important information that will decide the court’s decision and is something that all speculators should be able to see.

Government watchdog agency Empower Oversight has responded to this and is supporting Layton’s request to the court.

After all, the implications of this lawsuit go beyond just Ripple, but also has effects on the rest of the crypto industry as it will lay the foundation on how digital assets are categorized by the SEC.

Bitcoinist reports:

EMPOWR is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to improve independent oversight of government and corporate misconduct. Its mission is to help insiders document and report corruption to the appropriate authorities.

Via Twitter, the government watchdog wrote that founder and president Jason Foster’s organization supports the motion to unseal the Hinman documents related to SEC conflicts of interest in cryptocurrencies. In a press release, Foster stated that the public deserves answers from the SEC about what exactly the agency knew about Hinman’s speech and when it knew it:

The SEC has consistently stonewalled any attempts from public interest transparency organizations, including Empower Oversight, to shine a light on conflicts of interest and ethical questions at the agency.

The statement goes on to say that EMPOWR has been ignored by the U.S. agency since August 2021. At that time, the government watchdog made a request which is still the subject of an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the SEC.

This is also not the first time that Empower Oversight has been involved in the SEC vs Ripple lawsuit.

Last year, the watchdog agency had riled an opposition to the SEC’s motion for summary judgement as well as other requests that deal with getting access to SEC documents.

Of course, the SEC would later deny all requests to access internal documents and has been adamant about not revealing any of the Hinman documents.

As a result of these actions, many believe that the Hinman documents may be the missing piece of evidence that will finally force the court to rule in Ripple’s favor.

However, the SEC’s delay tactics for the past year have made the process painfully difficult and time consuming.

Empower Oversight has stated that it will continue to support this request from Dr. Layton in the hopes of sharing the Hinman documents for the world to see.

Bitcoinist concludes:

In a new development in Dr. Layton’s motion to intervene, pro-XRP attorney James Filan announced in a tweet on February 22 that an amended motion to intervene had been filed.

Dr. Layton’s original motion suggested that the SEC had offered the Hinman speech documents in support of its own summary judgment motion, which was not the case.

To that extent, the motion had to be amended on formal grounds to preserve the chance of being granted by the U.S. Southern District Court of New York judge.

At press time, the XRP price held at $0.3888 and remained in its sideways trend.

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