The Southern District Court of New York has scheduled a conference call to hear the SEC request against the deposition of former SEC director William Hinman. The hearing will take place on July 15, 2021, at,3 p.m. The conference call is public and dial-in information will be provided prior to the hearing.
Sarah Netburn, District Judge for the Southern District of New York, will attend the session. Defense lawyer James K. Filan tweeted today about every upcoming event in the crypto community’s historic lawsuit.
Why is Hinman’s Statement Important to Ripple?
William H. Hinman, former director of the Corporate Finance Department of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, may succeed or fail in the XRP lawsuit. Ripple’s goal is to get Hinman in the stands, not his high position in the SEC, and then the accused will be against him in the context of Hinman’s 2018 speech at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit: Crypto, against him.
In his speech, Hinman claimed that Ether was a non-security and compared it to Bitcoin. Hinman’s superior position in the SEC, coupled with his testimony against XRP’s status as a security, can completely reverse the SEC’s disadvantage.
Why Did the SEC Reject Hinman’s Testimony?
The SEC filed a motion to withdraw Hinman’s testimony and disagreed with Ripple’s previous motion to put Hinman on the testimony. The SEC went on to claim that Ripple’s request for testimony from senior officials was “irrelevant” as their only evidence of Hinman’s “unique first-hand knowledge” was indirect.
The SEC wrote in a letter. Judge Netburn:
“Defendants have not demonstrated as required by Lederman that Director Hinman has ‘unique first-hand knowledge’ or that the information they seek is not available from other sources as to any facts about which they seek to elicit testimony. The only topic on which Defendants even claim (incorrectly) that Director Hinman has ‘unique first-hand knowledge’ is ‘the circumstances under which he prepared and gave his [Ether] speech and the agency’s treatment of the speech after the fact’.”
However, Judge Netburn arranged a hearing regarding the SEC’s request to withdraw Hinman’s testimony, which may not produce positive results for Ripple. This meeting may mean that the decision may favour Hinman’s removal from the defendant’s list of witnesses.
