Ripple scored an essential victory in the case with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. According to judge Analisa Torres' decision revealed on Sept. 29, the financial regulator should present documents by Bill Hinman, former director of the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance.
Related: SEC and Ripple Applied for a Summary Judgment in the Court
The judge declined the SEC’s objections and mentioned the reasons for the decision. One of them is that internal speech pepers may be used by defendants to obtain potential impeachment evidence.
Emails, comments and drafts express Hinman's views on crypto he stated at a Yahoo Finance Summit in 2018. Then, Hinman said that Ethereum's Ether coin wasn't a security.
According to the Ripple team, the speech plays a key role in the lawsuit as it is contradictory to the SEC's claims that the sale of Ripple's XRP coins violated the law.
#XRPCommunity #SECGov v. #Ripple #XRP BREAKING: JUDGE TORRES OVERRULES THE SEC’S OBJECTIONS AND ORDERS THE SEC TO TURN OVER HINMAN DOCUMENTS. https://t.co/FzcdgNX59Z
— James K. Filan 🇺🇸🇮🇪 115k (beware of imposters) (@FilanLaw) September 29, 2022
The agency filed suit against Ripple and its executives in Dec. 2020, saying that XRP is an unlisted security asset. The SEC considers the coin to be security as it was used by the company for fundraising in 2013.