On the 19th of October 2022, Congressman Tom Emmer went on Twitter to call out the current staff attendance rate across all SEC buildings under Gary Gensler’s regime.
A new investigation into @GaryGensler’s regime at the SEC found that peak staff occupancy across all SEC buildings this year has averaged a mere SEVEN PERCENT… Why are the taxpayers funding hundreds of millions of dollars of SEC office space when no one’s showing up to work?
— Tom Emmer (@GOPMajorityWhip) October 19, 2022
The tweet showed the results of an investigation into SEC staff attendance in their place of work. It is clear that only 7% of SEC staff are using the space funded by taxpayer’s monies.
He further called out Gary Gensler, the current SEC chairman, to explain why the government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on things nobody seems to be using. And it would seem that this is not the first time Tom Emmer called out Gary Gensler.
Tom Emmer is a member of the U.S House of rep, serving his fourth term in office. He serves as the lead Republican on the Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee, tasked with Oversight and Investigations.
He has repeatedly spoken out against the current actions against the crypto industry, claiming its SEC’s intention to broaden their jurisdiction unconstitutionally. Thus the SEC is currently not regulating in good faith.
Gary Gensler is an investor and a member of the democratic party who has repeatedly shown his support for left-to-center policies. Before his current crack on crypto companies, he cracked down on multiple sections of the financial sector, including banks’ proprietary trading rights.
These investigations and controversies are appearing in the wake of Web3’s precedent case. SEC versus Ripple. This case would help define what “security” is, since the concept of investment has changed in the last decades.
The SEC went to court against Ripple Labs, claiming that their process of generating well over $1.3 billion is transactions on unregistered securities by selling XRP. Ripple refutes the claim, stating that XRP sales and trading did not fulfill the criteria of the Howey Test, and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling would serve as a definitive resolution to the matter.
As a result, the SEC and Ripple filed petitions for summary judgment, requesting that District Judge Analisa Torres rule on the case using supporting papers, establishing a precedent that would impact the future of the crypto industry.
