The SEC stated, "The speech drafts have no relevance to the claims or defenses in this case. They are non-public internal documents that the defendants (and other market participants) have never seen."
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is stepping up its efforts to prevent Ripple Labs from obtaining critical evidence in the lawsuit filed against the payments firm, alleging that it sold XRP as an unregistered security.
The SEC says in a recent court filing that it is adding to its earlier objection to a court order compelling the regulatory agency to reveal the draft of a speech given by its former Director of Corporate Finance, William Hinman.
The speech in question is about remarks made by Hinman in 2018, where he stated that Ethereum (ETH) was not a security.
However, the SEC insists the speech drafts sought by Ripple are only for internal consumption and are thus irrelevant to the lawsuit, alleging that XRP is an unregistered security.
In their words,
“The speech drafts have no relevance to the claims or defenses in this case. They are non-public internal documents that the defendants (and other market participants) have never seen."
The SEC claims that even if the speech drafts were relevant to the case, they are protected documents and should be withheld from Ripple.
According to the SEC, the speech drafts are pre-decisional because they were Hinman's opinions rather than the SEC's, and they predate any decision made by the Commission concerning Ripple and XRP.
Furthermore, the regulatory agency claims that the drafts are deliberative because they were intended for potential use in the formulation of future policy rather than existing policy.
