WASHINGTON — Jason Foster, Founder and President of Empower Oversight, issued the following statement after Roslyn Layton filed a motion with Judge Analisa Torres in the Southern District of New York to gain access to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) documents pertaining to a controversial speech on cryptocurrencies that former SEC executive William Hinman delivered in 2018.
“The SEC has consistently stonewalled any attempts from public interest transparency organizations, including Empower Oversight, to shine a light on conflicts of interest and ethical questions at the agency. The public deserves answers from the SEC as to what exactly the agency knew about Hinman’s speech and when they knew it,” said Jason Foster, Founder and President of Empower Oversight.
In December of last year, Empower Oversight filed a records request with the SEC as an effort to end the SEC’s delays in refusing to conduct full searches for records of communications using a list of names that the SEC asked Empower Oversight to provide, and then promptly ignored, a year ago. Before that, in October, Empower Oversight filed its opposition to the SEC’s motion for summary judgment in the ongoing FOIA lawsuit over documents related to conflicts of interest and selective enforcement in cryptocurrency cases. This all got started with an August 2021 request from Empower Oversight that is still the subject of ongoing FOIA lawsuit against the SEC.
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