Griffin: ‘Proposed rule would violate clear United States Supreme Court precedent’

LITTLE ROCK – Attorney General Tim Griffin released the following statement after leading a 12-state letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) opposing a proposed rule expanding its authority to regulate cryptocurrencies:

“Congress authorized the SEC to regulate securities. But it wants to go beyond that to aggressively reinterpret its authority to reach non-securities like artwork, real estate and cryptocurrencies. Congress never gave it that authority, and its proposed rule would violate clear United States Supreme Court precedent.

“Government regulation of cryptocurrencies is a mess, with different agencies all claiming authority and treating cryptocurrencies differently. Rather than add to this confusion by relabeling cryptocurrencies as securities, the SEC should wait for Congress to decide how best to regulate this trillion-dollar-plus market. I will always fight efforts to expand the administrative state beyond its rightful bounds.”

To read Griffin’s letter, click here.

About Attorney General Tim Griffin

Tim Griffin was elected attorney general of Arkansas on November 8, 2022. He was elected lieutenant governor of Arkansas on November 4, 2014, and was re-elected for his second four-year term on November 6, 2018. From 2011-2015, Griffin served as the 24^th representative of Arkansas’s Second Congressional District. For the 113^th Congress, he was a member of the House Committee on Ways and Means while also serving as a Deputy Whip for the Majority. In the 112^th Congress, he served as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the House Committee on the Judiciary.

Griffin is a graduate of Magnolia High School, Hendrix College in Conway, and Tulane Law School in New Orleans. He attended graduate school at Oxford University. Griffin has served as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve’s Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps for over 25 years and currently holds the rank of colonel. In 2005, Griffin was mobilized to active duty as an Army prosecutor at Fort Campbell, Kentucky and served with the 101^st Airborne Division (Air Assault in Mosul, Iraq). He is currently serving as the Staff Judge Advocate (SJA) for the 81^st Readiness Division at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Prior to his current post, Griffin served as the Commander of the 134^th Legal Operations Detachment (LOD) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and a senior legislative advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness at the Pentagon. Griffin holds a master’s degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. He also served as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas and Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Political Affairs for President George W. Bush. Griffin lives in Little Rock with his wife, Elizabeth, a Camden native, and their three children.

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