The SEC (Securities-and-Exchanges-Commission) of the United States recently submitted a letter regarding the order of the court to provide the supposedly privileged documents as Ripple had requested. As per the letter, it has been argued by the SEC that the entirety of the documents recorded in the filing, to be reviewed by the judge (named Sarah Netburn) in-camera, have a status of being secured by DPP (deliberative-process-privilege). The SEC considers that several of the logged entries, simultaneously, are protected by the doctrine of the work product as well as a legal privilege named “attorney-client privilege.”
Motion practice review
The brief letter of SEC has been filed by it to withhold the supposedly privileged documents from Ripple. The securities department asserts that each one of the documents to be reviewed in camera by the judge is privileged, as stated by James K. Filan (an ex-prosecutor at the federal level for Connecticut District under the Attorney office of the United States), who additionally shared a copy of the respective filing on his Twitter account. On 10th August, a motion was filed by Ripple to force the agency for the provision of papers shield by the “Deliberative-Process-Privilege.” On 31st August, the regulator was ordered by the court to provide the relevant documents to be reviewed in camera.
Nonetheless, the securities department mentioned that those documents included the “formal-position-papers” regarding the XRP, ETH, and BTC and a considerable majority of them denote the internal communications, drafts, and notes of the department which should not be liable to the orders of the court.
The SEC’s response
It was pointed out by the agency that just one among the intra-agency transcripts deals with a formal position or internal memorandum that was necessitated by the court to be provided or logged by the agency according to the orders of the court, and that document is shielded by each of the three privileges. A similar entry includes an enclosed email of a draft comprising the Hinman-Speech for the remarks of the SEC officials. Other entries take account of the handwritten notes that the officials of the SEC had taken during meetings arranged with external bodies like SBI Holdings (one among the prominent partners of Ripple) and CME (a prominent market of derivatives).
In conclusion, the department asserted that the risk of approaching privileged deliberations regarding XRP as well as Ethereum and Bitcoin is specifically high because the agency has a sensitive role in the regulation of the crypto market.