The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) attempt to seal records of internal documents related to William Hinman’s speech has been rejected, according to a May 16 indictment.
The motion was denied by Judge Analisa Torres, who ruled that “the Hinman speech documents are not protected by the deliberative process privilege because they do not relate to any agency’s position, decision or policy.”
The SEC had argued that the documents should be sealed because of the “obvious lack of relevance of these documents to the summary judgments” and because their disclosure would be “deeply prejudicial” to the financial regulator.
Judge Torres though do not agree with with this argument, saying that the documents are court documents subject to a strong presumption of public access because they are “relevant to the performance of the judicial function and useful in the legal proceedings”.
In a 2018 speech, the former SEC official said Ethereum (ETH) was not a security. The XRP community argued that the speech gave ETH a free pass for other digital assets in the industry and has become a key talking point in the ongoing litigation.
Meanwhile, this isn’t the first time Judge Torres has denied SEC’s attempt to seal the documents. Last year, she rejected the SEC’s request to seal the Hinman speech documents and ordered the regulator to produce the documents.
Ripple’s community welcomes news
Several members of the XRP community have welcomed the news, with many praising the judge for her verdict.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse described the judgment as another victory for transparency. Garling House added:
“Unredacted Hinman emails will soon be publicly available – stay tuned as the attorneys work through the mechanisms to make that happen.”
Web3 attorney Jeremy Hynes said the documents will “either show bad faith or just some embarrassing emails showing the nightmare of confusion that is the SEC in itself (or both).”
Meanwhile, the judge also denied some of Ripple’s requests to seal all of its financial statements and other documents. However, she granted the seal on her most recent statements from 2020 to date.
XRP Up 7%
Following the news, Ripple XRP grew 7% over the past 24 hours to $0.4478 as of writing, according to CryptoSlate facts.
The digital asset is the sixth largest crypto asset by market capitalization and had a trading volume of $1.38 billion in the past 24 hours.
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