Coinbase seeks court orders on SEC allegedly deleted Gensler text messages

According to Coinbase, Coinbase has asked a federal court to order a "accelerate appropriate search" of text messages deleted by Gary Gensler, after the Office of the Inspector General revealed that the Securities and Exchange Commission had deleted his communication records for a year. In court filings filed Thursday through History Associates, Coinbase cited the Inspector General’s Sept. 3 report that the SEC “ruled out text messages from officials when it processed a request from the Freedom of Information Act, even if many of them comply with institutional records under the Freedom of Information Act.” "Gensler's SEC destroyed the documents they need to save and present. We now have evidence from the SEC's own inspector general," Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal said on X on Thursday. “Today, we ask the federal court to resolve this serious breach of public trust to ensure it never happens again.” In September 2023, the SEC removed nearly a year of text messages sent and received by then-Chairman Gary Gensler under a new policy. However, the Office of the Inspector General noted that the messages could have been preserved, but the agency’s IT staff “factorily resetting the smartphone, resulting in the device data being permanently deleted, including text messages for nearly a year.” According to the report, all text messages from Gensler from October 2022 to September 2023 were lost. This period overlaps with the FTX collapse and the time when the SEC strengthens enforcement actions against cryptocurrency exchanges including Coinbase. “Even though we asked for all communications within the SEC related to cryptocurrency regulation and enforcement decisions a few years ago, Gensler’s SEC still did so,” Grewal said Thursday, adding that Coinbase demanded “accelerate forensics, sanctions and immediately generate all response texts.” The Block has contacted the SEC for comment.