After Donald Trump’s first election, in early 2017 the Commission under Acting Chair Michael Piwowar cut the delegation back, but not all the way. For the next four years formal order authority was limited to the Enforcement Director and not the 20 or so Associate Directors. In 2021, Acting Chair Allison Herren Lee restored it to the Associate Directors. What…
Lawyers for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are pushing back against what they describe as Coinbase’s “breathtakingly broad” subpoena requests searching for “essentially all documents that in any way relate to crypto.” The court documents, filed Monday, are the latest jab in the ongoing fight between the SEC and Coinbase over the crypto exchange’s attempt to subpoena the…
Coinbase Inc. (COIN) is going after internal chatter at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that may shed light on its pursuit of cryptocurrency exchanges as illegal enterprises – including Chair Gary Gensler’s own communications – but the scope of its latest request filed on Tuesday has been dialed back after resistance from a federal judge. The company heard…
The judge took specific issue with Coinbase requesting documents from Gensler predating his term as chair of the regulatory agency. Kevin Schwartz, an attorney with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz representing Coinbase, said the agency has refused to even discuss the totality of the documents Coinbase might have, but that Gensler’s communications were relevant to the case. Jorge Tenreiro, an…
Elon Musk has agreed to testify in the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s probe of his 2022 acquisition of the social-media platform once known as Twitter. The billionaire will sit for a five-hour deposition after dropping his plan to appeal a court orderthat he comply with a government subpoena, according to a filing Thursday in San Francisco federal court. The…
Elon Musk will get another chance to resist testifying in the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s probe of his 2022 Twitter Inc. acquisition after a federal magistrate said she erred in ordering him to comply with a subpoena. It turns out Musk is entitled to make his case to a higher-ranking US district judge about why he shouldn’t have to…
A San Francisco federal judge signaled that Elon Musk should testify about his purchase of Twitter Inc. stock ahead of his $44 billion buyout of the company last year as part of an investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Despite the billionaire’s complaint that the agency was harassing him, Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler on Thursday asked the two…
A top U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission official on Wednesday said the SEC will turn to courts to enforce its subpoena authority when someone is “playing games” or trying to delay investigations. The SEC’s enforcement director Gurbir Grewal said the agency rarely turns to a court to enforce its subpoena authority, but will do so when necessary. Grewal estimated the…
In this case, the SEC is on solid ground as the law enforcing the requirements of investigative demands, or subpoenas, is clear cut, said several former SEC officials. While the stakes are lower this time, the new case again shines a spotlight on the extraordinary feud between the world’s richest man and most powerful securities regulator, which has for years…
A judge questioned whether the SEC will “open the floodgates” to law firm data demands if Covington & Burling is forced to release names of 298 publicly-traded clients whose information may have been exposed in a cyberattack. The Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit to compel Covington to release the names in the 2020 firm attack presents “challenging” questions, District Judge…