The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has asked the judge in the SEC v. Ripple case to block Ripple and its executives from accessing various internal records it claims are unrelated to determining whether XRP is a security. The SEC says that the “defendants do not actually seek relevant evidence, but rather seek to harass the SEC, derail the case’s focus away from its merits, and bog down the SEC with document review.”
SEC Seeks to Limit Ripple’s Access to Its Records
The SEC wrote a letter to Judge Sarah Netburn Wednesday attempting to block Ripple from accessing certain records. The letter followed the court order granting Ripple Labs, its CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and co-founder Christian Larsen (Defendants) access to the SEC’s records pertaining to XRP, bitcoin, and ether.
The order requires the SEC to search the external emails of 19 custodians for documents related to the three cryptocurrencies but denied the defendants’ requests for certain internal SEC communications considered irrelevant to the case, the letter describes.
The SEC confirmed that it is in the process of complying with the court order and “has begun reviewing tens of thousands of external emails from the identified custodians for production pursuant to the order.” The court also required the parties to “meet and confer” about whether the SEC should produce certain official documents “expressing the agency’s interpretation or views” on XRP, bitcoin, and ether.
However, the SEC claims:
It has become evident through the meet-and-confer process that Defendants are seeking to ignore the limitations of this court’s order and to mire the SEC in indefinite discovery disputes and, if successful, document review.
“Rather than meet and confer about whether the SEC should review and
