Coinbase filed a federal court motion demanding accountability after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) deleted nearly a year of text messages from former Chair Gary Gensler during the agency’s crypto enforcement campaign.
The Sept. 11 filing seeks expedited discovery, sanctions, and immediate production of all responsive communications.
An SEC Office of Inspector General report released Sept. 3 revealed the agency deleted Gensler’s texts from October 2022 through September 2023. This period coincides with the FTX collapse and multiple crypto enforcement actions, including those against Coinbase.
The deletion occurred after Coinbase submitted FOIA requests seeking “all communications” related to crypto regulatory decisions.
Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal stated via social media:
“The Gensler SEC destroyed documents they were required to preserve and produce. We now have proof from the SEC’s own Inspector General.”
Court orders allegedly violated
The court filing alleged that the SEC violated multiple judicial orders requiring production of communications between Gensler and other officials regarding Ethereum’s regulatory status.
Despite court directives encompassing “all documents and communications,” the agency’s productions included no text messages and did not indicate that texts were searched.
The SEC conducted belated text message searches only in April and June 2025, months after claiming compliance with court orders.
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Additionally, the filing argued that the agency reported no responsive texts were found. However, it acknowledged that searches were incomplete due to technical limitations affecting dozens of senior officials’ devices.
‘Mission-related communications’
The Inspector General found that 38% of recovered Gensler texts involved “mission-related communications,” including discussions related to crypto enforcement, contradicting claims that he used texts only for administrative purposes.
One May 2023 conversation involved Gensler, his staff, and the Enforcement Division Director discussing the timing of actions against crypto trading platforms.
Grewal said the information creates a double standard problem for the SEC, which imposed over $1 billion in fines on financial firms for recordkeeping violations during Gensler’s tenure.
He added that the agency emphasized that “everybody should play by the same rules,” while pursuing enforcement actions for identical text message preservation failures.
History Associates, representing Coinbase, argues that 40 additional senior SEC officials face an ongoing risk of losing text messages due to backup system failures. The filing requests emergency intervention to prevent further destruction of documents.
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