Prominent Forbes Journalist Files Amended Motion to Obtain Hinman Documents, Here’s Why

Pro-Ripple defense lawyer James K. Filan, who closely tracks the SEC lawsuit against Ripple Labs and shares regular updates on it, has tweeted that senior contributor to Forbes Dr. Roslyn Layton has submitted an amended motion to intervene.

High value of Hinman documents for defendants

Roslyn Layton seeks access to the documents related to the speech delivered by SEC’s former director of corporate finance, Hinman, in 2018. In that speech, he stressed why Bitcoin and Ethereum can be classified as commodities rather than securities. These two leading digital currencies are also classified as securities by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

When the regulator filed a summary judgment motion in the fall of last year, it asked that some of these documents be sealed. Dr. Layton asked Judge Torres to put pressure on the SEC to make it release the aforementioned documents for public access and prevent the regulator from sealing them.

The journalist stressed that the demand for the release of the aforementioned documents is particularly strong now since they have gathered a lot of attention from the public and media. The Ripple case, in particular, has gained a lot of attention, Dr. Layton stated in the motion. Many analysts are calling it an “inflection point” for the entire crypto industry.

Here’s what new motion contains

In the amended motion, Dr. Layton corrected an error that was made in the original motion to intervene that she filed — in the first version of the document, she stated that the SEC offered to use the Hinman speech documents to underpin its own motion for summary judgement. Dr. Layton’s counsel has offered their apologies to the judge for this error.

Prominent XRP enthusiast @XRPcryptowolf believes that once access to the Hinman documents is gained, it is likely to drive the regulator to settle with Ripple Labs. He shared this view in a comment under James Filan’s root tweet.

#XRPCommunity #SECGov v. #Ripple #XRP Dr. Roslyn Layton has filed an Amended Motion to Intervene to petition the Court for access to the Hinman Speech Documents. Dr. Layton’s original request suggested that the SEC had offered the Hinman Speech Documents in support of its own… https://t.co/yAwolkWqM5 pic.twitter.com/Rq8gGGb9su

— James K. Filan 🇺🇸🇮🇪 (@FilanLaw) February 22, 2023

Ripple-SEC case expected to end this year

During the WEF event that took place in Davos, Switzerland, at the start of the year, the head of Ripple Labs, Bradley Garlinghouse, said in several interviews that he does not expect the SEC to make a settlement with Ripple. The basis for this opinion is that Ripple’s original demand was that XRP is acknowledged to be a nonsecurity on a forward-going basis. The SEC, apparently, will not agree with that.

Still, with all the necessary court materials summarized and submitted to the judge, Garlinghouse expects the judge to make a decision in the first half of this year.

As reported by U.Today earlier, should the court’s decision not be satisfactory to Ripple, the fintech giant is willing to take it on to the U.S. Supreme Court, where John Deaton, another pro-Ripple attorney, believes Ripple will definitely beat the SEC.