XRP Lawsuit: SEC Continues To Try To Seal Hinman Documents

December 27, 2022 9:54 pm Comments

In the recent developments regarding the lawsuit between the SEC and Ripple, the SEC has once again requested to seal the Hinman documents and prevent them from being used in the case.

The reasoning that they provided is that “they were not relevant to the court’s summary judgement decision” which is very questionable.

The reason why that should be criticized is because the documents may very likely contain information that would affect the court’s judgement such as the potential revelation of a conflict of interest that Hinman may have had.

After all, many XRP holders have always wondered why XRP was specifically targeted during a time when it was the top competitor against Ethereum.

Coincidentally, Ethereum was not accused of being a security the same way that XRP was and the Hinman documents have a high probability of containing information that shows why the SEC made the decision that it did at the time.

CoinTelegraph reports:

The Motion to Seal Summary Judgment Document was filed by the SEC on Dec. 22, requesting the sealing of various information and documents, most notably the Hinman Speech documents.

The Hinman Speech documents refer to the speech given by former SEC Corporation Finance Division Director William Hinman at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit in June 2018, where he reportedly stated that Ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain, is not a security.

Ripple believes it is a vital piece of evidence to help them with its case against the U.S. regulator.

In its latest motion, the SEC said its mission outweighs the “public’s right” to access documents that have “no relevance” to the Court’s summary judgment decision.

It also requested that any references to the Hinman Speech Documents be “redacted” from the papers of the defendants.

Because of this recent request from the SEC, many members of the XRP community are now also questioning if the SEC had any more information that they were potentially hiding.

After all, the new request from the SEC had also requested to seal other additional information which includes things like information regarding the SEC’s expert witnesses and other internal SEC documents that were used between SEC officials.

With such a large request to seal such a large amount of information, it begs the question on why exactly is the SEC doing this and why is it doing this right before the summary judgement.

Whether or not the request will actually be approved is another matter.

However, speculators believe that this should not delay the lawsuit significantly anymore as Ripple had already filed its final submission against the SEC over 2 weeks ago in the beginning of December.

This means that the case should end soon as it approaches the two year milestone.

CoinTelegraph concludes:

It comes only weeks after Ripple Labs filed its final submission against the SEC on Dec. 2, meaning the two-year legal battle may soon come to an end.

Ripple had confirmed on Oct. 21 that it had access to the Hinman Speech Documents after 18 months and six court orders, though the documents still remained confidential at the SEC’s insistence.

The SEC was previously denied by the courts to keep Hinman documents a secret, with the U.S. judge calling out the SEC’s hypocrisy for doing so.

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