In the Ripple Labs case, SEC had requested to seal some papers has drawn criticism from the public.

The controversial Hinman Speech materials have been asked to be sealed by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which claims they have no bearing on the court’s summary judgment ruling.

On December 22, the SEC submitted a motion to seal the summary judgment document, asking to have many pieces of information and documents, most notably the Hinman Speech materials, sealed.

The documents referred to as the “Hinman Speech” refer to a speech made by William Hinman, a former director of the SEC Corporation’s finance division, in June 2018 at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit. In that speech, he reportedly denied that Ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain, is secure.

In their lawsuit against the American regulator, Ripple views it as a crucial piece of evidence.

According to the SEC’s most recent motion, the “public’s right” to see materials that “have no significance” to the Court’s summary judgment determination trumps the SEC’s purpose.

Additionally, it asked that any mentions of the Hinman Speech Documents be “redacted” from the defendants’ documents.

The SEC’s request has drawn ire from the cryptocurrency community, with one user alleging that Gary Gensler, the head of the SEC, has a secret agenda:

#XRPCommunity #SECGov v. #Ripple #XRP The SEC has filed its Motion to Seal certain documents filed in connection with the Motions for Summary Judgment.https://t.co/60zy8zDa2e

— James K. Filan 🇺🇸🇮🇪 126k (beware of imposters) (@FilanLaw) December 22, 2022

Additionally, material pertaining to the SEC’s expert witnesses, XRP investors who provided statements, and internal SEC records demonstrating debate and deliberation by SEC’s officials were sought to be sealed.

It happens only a few weeks after Ripple Labs submitted its last response to the SEC on December 2, indicating that the two-year legal dispute may soon come to a close.

After 18 months and six court orders, Ripple finally acknowledged on October 21 that it had access to the Hinman Speech Documents, however, the SEC insisted that the records stay secret.

A U.S. judge earlier rejected the SEC’s request to keep the Hinman records secret and criticized the SEC for acting hypocritically in doing so.