New York judge Analisa Torres ordered the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to hand over internal documents containing emails and drafts of former commissioner William Hinman's 2018 speech.
The order could provide a major win for Ripple as the speech may hold the key to unraveling the SEC's legal arguments.
It is understood that the magistrate has rejected all three objections of the SEC refusing to share internal documents of Hinman's speech.
This is because the SEC was supposed to hand over documents by judge Sarah Netburn in January but the SEC claimed that the internal speech documents had nothing to do with the claims or defenses in the case.
And not protected by the deliberative process privilege (DPP) which should serve to protect internal speech documents as well as protect the attorney-client privilege.
According to Torres, the DPP will not request the SEC's privacy documents but only Hinman's personal opinion and the court will also not protect the documents through attorney-client privilege.
Nevertheless, the court sided with Ripple because the speech document could be used to obtain strong evidence or to impeach witnesses in the trial.
Meanwhile, Hinman's speech is said to include comments on the legal status of Ethereum (ETH), views on whether or not Bitcoin (BTC) is safe and whether the company's sale of XRP is an unregistered securities offering.
