Lawyers, who represent distributed ledger company Ripple and individual defendants, CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen have informed Judge Sarah Netburn that former lawyer William Hinman’s testimony has been postponed until July 19.
The party requesting the testimony must notify all other parties involved in the dispute in writing and indicate the place and time of the testimony.
Defendant’s subsequent re-notifications changed the date to reflect Hinman’s availability.
It’s worth noting, however, that Hinman’s testimony is pending in light of a pending motion to withdraw the SEC’s Ripple motion filed last month. If Judge Netburn approves the motion, his testimony will not take place.
Ripple Keeps Attacking SEC
Ripple went on the offensive in his legal battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, calling on Hinman, the regulator’s former director of corporate finance, to testify about the agency’s policies on cryptocurrencies.
As reported by Fxcryptonews, the US Securities and Exchange Commission claimed that the removal of senior government officials was severely restricted in their application for repeal. Hence, giving the green light to testimony will set a precedent for a number of similar cases and prevent lawyers from seeking public service positions.
In a July 8 letter, the agency also stated that none of the cases in which an application for the removal of a government official of Hinman’s stature had approved:
“Moreover, defendants cannot point to a single case where the deposition of an SEC official of Director Hinman’s rank was allowed, nor can they distinguish the many cases where courts quashed the depositions of other similarly-ranked officials.”
Hinman’s 2018 Speech About Ethereum
In its motion, the US Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that Hinman did not have “firsthand information” about the status of XRP’s securities and accused the XRP community of making “false statements” about what are known as conflicts of interest to senior officials.
In Hinman’s 2018 speech, he mentioned that ether is not a security, which is the core of Ripple’s deposit requirements. However, the SEC insists that these are personal statements from lawyers and do not reflect the agency’s views on the matter. Hinman responded to these arguments in his statement:
“I began the speech with the following disclaimer: “My remarks are mine alone, not necessarily those of the Commission, the Commissioners, or the staff.”
