U.S. District Court Orders SEC to Release Hinman Documents

• The U.S District Court rejected the SEC’s attempt to conceal Hinman Documents.
• William Hinman previously claimed that Ether was not a security.

Ripple Labs is now one step ahead in the ongoing legal dispute with the US regulatory body, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres has recently rejected the SEC’s second attempt to conceal records connected to former SEC Corporation Finance Division Director, William Hinman.

Allegations of Ripple and SEC

The disputed documents are related to a speech given by William Hinman in 2018, at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit. Throughout the speech, he argued that Ether was not a security. Following this, the SEC declared that Hinman’s comments did not accurately reflect the agency’s policy viewpoint. 

However, Ripple Labs claimed that the speech is a key piece of evidence in the action the SEC has launched against it, alleging that sales of Ripple’s XRP violated U.S. securities laws.

Following District Court Judge Sarah Netburn’s order declaring that the emails and draughts of the speech were not covered by deliberative process privilege, Judge Torres’ judgment dismissed SEC objections to release the documents. The SEC subsequently asserted attorney-client privilege over the materials, which Netburn overruled in July.

The SEC filed a complaint against Ripple in December 2020, claiming that the company sold over $1.38 billion worth of unregistered securities through the sale of XRP. As co-defendants for allegedly aiding and abetting Ripple’s actions, the SEC also identified the CEO Brad Garlinghouse and executive chairman Chris Larsen of Ripple.

Moreover, at the time of writing, Ripple’s native cryptocurrency, XRP is trading around $0.491 with a one-day trading volume of $4,061,812,163. XRP has increased by nearly 11.28% in the last 24 hours, according to CMC. 

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