Forbes reporter Dr. Roslyn Layton received support for her motion to intervene in a lawsuit between Ripple Labs and the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) seeking public access to Hinman’s speech documents. Empower Oversight Whistleblowers & Research (EMPOWR) has expressed support for the movement.
EMPOWR is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to promote independent oversight of government and corporate misconduct. Our mission is to help insiders document and report corruption to the appropriate authorities.
Importance of Hinman Docs In Ripple Case
Via Twitter, the government watchdog write The organization’s founder and president, Jason Foster, supported the motion to unseal Hinman’s documents related to the SEC’s conflict of interest in cryptocurrencies. In a press release, Foster said the public deserves answers from the SEC about what exactly the agency knew about Hinman’s speech and when it found out:
The SEC has consistently stonewalled any efforts by transparent public interest organizations, including Empower Oversight, to shed light on conflicts of interest and ethical questions within the agency.
The statement went on to say that EMPOWR has been ignored by US agencies since August 2021. At that time, government watchdogs made requests that are still the subject of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the SEC.
Last October, Empower Oversight filed an opposition to the SEC’s motion for summary judgment in its FOIA claims regarding documents related to conflicts of interest and selective enforcement in cryptocurrency cases. In December, the organization also filed a records request with the SEC seeking a complete record of communications with a list of names.
Thus, the interests of EMPOWR align with the intentions of Dr. Roslyn Layton, who argues that Ripple’s case against the SEC will decide the future of cryptocurrencies in the United States.
According to Dr. Layton, the case would be a legal referendum on the SEC’s entire “regulation by enforcement” system for the industry, so the public has a legitimate interest in the Hinman documents.
Motion To Intervene Denied
In recent developments regarding the movement of Dr. Layton to intervene, pro-XRP attorney James Filan announced in a tweet on February 22 that an amended motion to intervene had been filed.
The original movement of Dr. Layton suggested that the SEC had offered documents of Hinman’s speech in support of its own summary judgment motion, which was not the case. Until then, the motion must be amended on official grounds to maintain the possibility of being granted by a judge of the US Southern District Court in New York.
At press time, the XRP price is holding at $0.3888 and remains in a downward trend.
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