The XRP community has been reviewing the recently released Hinman documents in the legal case between Ripple Labs and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
On June 13, the Hinman documents were released to the public. These documents contain important insights from a speech delivered in 2018 by Bill Hinman, a former director at the SEC.
Pro-XRP lawyer John Deaton took to his Twitter handle and shared with his followers that he was reading the Hinman deposition. The lawyer said that Hinman did not tell the whole truth.
He wrote, “READING THE HINMAN DEPOSITION. Snapshot summary: he didn’t tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth! I’ll explain and prove it in the near future.”
Former SEC director, William Hinman, provided sworn testimony in the Ripple/SEC lawsuit on July 27, 2021. The deposition focused on Hinman’s 2018 speech where he stated that Ethereum is not a security. While the deposition was not publicly witnessed, Ripple filed redacted versions of it in their fair notice summary judgment.
Deaton had earlier claimed, “The documents are what I expected in two ways. One, it helps Ripple, Coinbase, and others being unfairly targeted by regulators playing fast and loose with the law they took an oath to uphold. How much it helps in the courtroom is yet to be seen, but it certainly helps in the court of public opinion and in the halls of Congress. Two, it highlights the massive conflicts of interests and gross appearances of impropriety by William Hinman and Jay Clayton.”
Following Ripple’s request to unseal the documents related to the lawsuit, the SEC filed a motion to block their release. However, Judge Torres denied the SEC’s motion and ruled that the documents should not be sealed.
