U.S. House Committee sent a letter regarding recordkeeping, FOIA. And an industry advocacy group advised Wells notice recipients to request his recusal.
Three committee chairs in the United States House of Representatives have sent a letter to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler demanding a more satisfactory response to their letter dated November 1 regarding compliance with recordkeeping requirements by the SEC chairman and the agency.
Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Jim Jordan, Chairman of the Oversight Committee James Comer, and Chairman of the Financial Services Committee Patrick McHenry stated that Gensler’s response to their inquiry did not address the requests made in their letter.
In particular, they requested certification that the SEC complies with federal recordkeeping and transparency rules, that Gensler and his subordinates have not used private email accounts for official business, and clarifications regarding the agency’s definition and use of “off-channel communications.”
Rep. Tom Emmer and the congressmen were responding to a Wall Street Journal article that criticized the SEC and other agencies for poor recordkeeping. The report concluded, “Government officials routinely engage in the same sort of record-keeping shenanigans for which Wall Street groups were recently fined [by the SEC],” .
The article specifically mentioned the use of conversations by government officials for official business, which are not searched in response to subsequent Freedom of Information Act requests.
1/ SEC Chair Gary Gensler has wrongly prejudged that all digital assets are securities.
As a result, federal law requires that he recuse himself from all enforcement decisions related to digital assets.@MTCoppel and I wrote a paper explaining why 👇https://t.co/xgJ09o4SPS
— Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) June 29, 2023The new letter restates the initial requests and adds, “If you do not intend to comply with any or all of the above requests #1-5, describe the factual and legal basis for your noncompliance.” Inconsistencies in Gensler’s 2021 publicly accessible meeting schedules were cited in a letter dated June 28. Cryptography is discussed.
The next day, the Blockchain Association published a paper arguing that Gensler should recuse himself from digital asset enforcement decisions. This criticism was specifically crypto-related. The pamphlet asserted:
“In the digital asset space, the SEC has all but abandoned its role as a rulemaking body. Key issues of existential importance to the digital asset industry remain unresolved, chief among them the question of whether and when a digital asset represents a ‘security.’
According to the publication, digital assets are unregistered securities, and all digital asset trading platforms are unregistered securities exchanges, citing numerous statements by the SEC chairman. These statements demonstrate that Gensler prejudged “everything other than bitcoin,” the report continued, and:
“Due process requires not only that agency decisionmakers act without bias, but also that they avoid even the appearance of bias.”
The paper reminded Wells to notify recipients that they can seek Gensler’s recusal through the SEC or federal court.
