The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is attempting to block Ripple from calling upon the SEC’s former director of division of corporate finance to testify in the ongoing lawsuit between the two entities.
According to a new court filing, the SEC requests that William Hinman not be deposed, claiming that Ripple does not have “exceptional circumstances” to justify involving the former director.
As an ex-SEC insider, Hinman may have some privileged information regarding their decision to officially name Bitcoin and Ethereum non-securities.
Details relating to those rulings could help Ripple expose any double standards in the governing practices of the top US regulator and discredit the agency’s accusations against the San Francisco payments company.
As per the SEC, “To depose a former high-ranking government official like director Hinman, Defendants bear the burden of showing ‘exceptional circumstances’ justifying the deposition.”
The SEC’s legal filing argues that Ripple does not have the proper grounds to call upon Hinman.
“Far from presenting ‘exceptional circumstances’ sufficient to justify such a deposition, these proposed inquiries – the answers to which are at least partly protected by the deliberative process privilege and, to the extent not privileged, could be obtained through far less intrusive means – relate to the everyday tasks of most high-ranking government officials.”
As XRP supporter and crypto legal expert Jeremy Hogan points out,
“In other words, President Biden is the head of the executive branch, but we can’t be having him deposed every time the FDA is sued for not approving a drug. You have to show why you need to specifically depose him.”
Ripple has been accused by the SEC of unlawfully selling its XRP token as an unregistered security, and the regulator alleges that the crypto still remains one to this day.
Should Ripple win the right to have Hinman deposed, the deposition will take place on June 30th.
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