- Lawyer John Deaton expects Judge Analisa Torress to declare the draft of the Hinman speech as “judicial documents” thus making it public.
- He also said that the SEC is preparing for a massive enforcement action against the crypto firms and that it would lead to a backlash.
The Ripple vs SEC battle for a long time has centered around access to a speech by former SEC Chair William Hinman. In the latest development, crypto lawyer John Deaton has predicted that the emails and the draft speech of Hinman will be available to the public very soon.
In his Twitter thread, Deaton writes that the Judge of the U.S. District Court of New York – Analisa Torress – will declare the Hinman speech as judicial documents. In that case, she might make the draft public.
Regarding the Hinman emails and speech drafts: the SEC has requested for them to remain sealed, even after Judge Torres’ ruling on summary judgment. I believe the emails and speech drafts will be made public at some point, regardless of Judge Torres’ decision on whether to seal. https://t.co/BcYTuh9QrW
— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) March 19, 2023
Crypto lawyers Deaton further noted: “If Judge Torres cites to or relies on the emails/drafts in making her decision, I am 75 percent sure that she will declare them “judicial documents” and order that they be unsealed (but with limited redactions). But even if she doesn’t, the emails and drafts are going to be made public”.
As said, the Hinman speech is core in deciding the legal outcome of the Ripple vs SEC battle. Ripple cites a speech by Hinman from 2018 where he reportedly stated that Ethereum is not a security.
Ripple has argued that the same securities laws shall be applicable to ETH and XRP since both sold tokens through an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). However, the SEC has been reluctant to share the documents on the grounds of confidentiality.
John Deaton expects more enforcement action by the SEC
Explaining the reason behind his confidence that the Hinman speech shall go public, Deaton said that he expects more enforcement actions by the SEC on popular crypto exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance US.
He believes that the SEC will sue the exchanges for selling securities and it’s coming soon. Crypto lawyer John Deaton cites the case of Dragonchain which was sued by the SEC and is currently in active litigation. DRGN is an ERC20 token running on and governed by the Ethereum blockchain.
“You don’t think they will seek to get these emails and drafts to help with their defense? There are orders already in place that have denied any privilege claims,” asks Deaton.
He said that the SEC is going really hard after crypto projects. Almost 200-300 projects have received subpoenas and even dozens of companies receiving Wells Notices. Deaton also notes that the current SEC Chair Gary Gensler has beefed up his enforcement team to go after crypto companies.
The crypto-friendly lawyer has been actively tracking the developments in the Ripple vs SEC case and is ready to offer his assistance. He also accused the regulators of their coordinated attack on the crypto industry while recently shutting down the crypto-friendly banks.
Furthermore, John Deaton is actively working on setting up a union to fight SEC’s enforcement actions. Deaton said he is “…attempting to assemble a group of companies/people who the SEC claims violated Section 5 of the Securities Act because they issued, offered or sold a token the SEC claims satisfies the Howey test.”
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