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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has settled a Coinbase-backed Freedom of Information Act lawsuit over internal records from former Chair Gary Gensler’s tenure.
The SEC will pay History Associates $150,000 in attorney fees, release two withheld documents and review how it searches for and preserves text messages. The agreement concerns public-record requests, not the regulator’s separate enforcement case against Coinbase, which was dismissed in 2025.
SEC Will Pay $150K and Release Two Documents
History Associates filed the case in Washington federal court in June 2024 after submitting records requests on Coinbase’s behalf. The requests sought communications from senior SEC officials about crypto policy and enforcement decisions.
The July 22 settlement requires the agency to pay the agreed attorney fees and provide two documents previously withheld.
Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal said the resolution also requires changes to SEC record-retention practices. The SEC had not released a separate public statement at the time the agreement was reported.
Automated Wipe Deleted 11 Months of Gensler Messages
An SEC Office of Inspector General review found that messages sent and received by Gensler between October 18, 2022, and September 6, 2023, were lost after his government-issued phone was mistakenly treated as inactive. An automated policy triggered an enterprise wipe after the device stopped communicating with the SEC’s management system.
IT staff then performed a factory reset while trying to restore the phone, deleting messages and system logs that remained on it. The inspector general said the SEC had not backed up Gensler’s phone for nearly a year. The report could not determine the full contents of the messages that were never recovered.
Inspector General Reviewed About 1,500 Recovered Texts
Investigators examined about 1,500 recovered or recreated messages and concluded that most qualified as SEC records. Around 38% of the recovered conversations were mission-related and involved agency business, senior staff or commissioners.
The review also found that some FOIA searches excluded texts even when requests sought broad categories such as “communications.” It warned that the missing records could affect the SEC’s responses to public-information requests.
Settlement Requires Review of Text Preservation and FOIA Searches
The settlement ends the History Associates case after about two years. The SEC’s next obligations are to release the two documents, pay the agreed fees, and complete its review of records searches and text-preservation procedures.
The case adds pressure on the agency to show that text messages from senior officials are being preserved and searched when they qualify as federal records.
