In the continuing case between Coinbase and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a federal judge made it sound like Coinbase might not be able to look into Gary Gensler’s private messages from before he was chair of the SEC.
At a meeting on July 11 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Coinbase’s lawyers asked to see the data on Gensler’s personal devices because the Securities and Exchange Commission had not provided them any guarantees about his conversations with market makers.
To fight back, the SEC’s lawyers asked Judge Katherine Polk Failla to throw out the subpoena, saying that Gensler was not a witness or an expert in the Coinbase case.
SEC Challenges Coinbase’s Subpoena
According to Inner City Press, Coinbase’s lawyers said, “We can’t get information from the SEC.” “We included the time before [Gensler’s chairmanship] because we tried to talk to Mr. Gensler and the SEC, but they wouldn’t confirm that he didn’t use his personal device to talk about crypto.”
Judge Failla was not sure about Coinbase’s claims, but she agreed to look at them. “Strong views about the disproportionate burden of inquiry into Mr. Gensler’s statements before he became chair,” she said, and she asked both sides to send letters to the court by July 15.
The request for Gensler’s personal devices is part of the discovery process in the SEC’s case against Coinbase, which was filed in June 2023. It is said by the Securities and Exchange Commission that Coinbase has been breaking US securities laws since 2019 by working as a “unregistered securities broker.”
Coinbase first looked for Gensler’s messages on his personal devices in April, saying that he had shared his thoughts and talked to market participants in a personal role. The discovery request was only for communications and papers that had to do with Gensler’s views on cryptocurrency starting in 2017.
