A U.S. district judge on Wednesday chastised Martin Shkreli, the boisterous former hedge-fund manager and pharmaceutical-industry executive, for speaking to the media during the early days of his trial for securities fraud.
Renae Merle of The Washington Post had the news:
Shkreli has struggled to abide by his defense attorneys’ advice to keep quiet since being charged in late 2015 with misleading investors in two of his hedge funds and the biopharmaceutical company Retrophin, all of which he founded. He has taken to YouTube to live-stream his thoughts and was kicked off Twitter earlier this year for harassing a journalist.
But for prosecutors and Matsumoto, the breaking point appears to have been a surprise visit Shkreli, 34, made last week to an overflow room in the courthouse filled with reporters. During the visit, Shkreli criticized the prosecution team from the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn, mocking them as the “junior varsity” to the federal prosecutors in Manhattan. “I think the world blames me for almost everything,” he said before being called out of the room by his attorney.
Shkreli’s attorney, Benjamin Brafman, said he was alerted by a U.S. marshal that Shkreli was in the room and “ran” across the courthouse to pull him out.
“I was shocked by these comments and statements…. Any juror could have heard them,” said Matsumoto.
Jessica DiNapoli of Reuters reported that Shkreli’s attorney defended his comments:
Shkreli’s attorney, Benjamin Brafman, asked the judge that day to reject the request on the grounds that his client had a First Amendment right to speak freely, according to the filings.
Shkreli last week told reporters outside the court that an alleged victim of his was not actually a victim because she made money from his investments, attorneys for the US government told Judge Kiyo Matsumoto in a letter on Monday. He also directly spoke on camera to a journalist and appeared to be commenting on the case on Twitter under the handle @BLMBro, they added.
Brafman said Shkreli was in a delicate emotional state and believed that the press focused unfairly on some of his negative characteristics.
“His comments are the somewhat natural, though unfortunate consequence of a young man with a demonstrated history of significant anxiety being at the center of a supremely difficult time in his life,” Brafman wrote in the filing.
Dan Mangan of CNBC.com reported a plea deal was discussed last week:
Also Wednesday, prosecutors who sought to have Shkreli gagged from talking about the case revealed that Shkreli’s defense team several times had approached prosecutors about potentially resolving the case with a guilty plea to avoid going to trial.
Prosecutors said that fact, disclosed for the first time in Brooklyn, New York, federal court, contradicted Shkreli’s claim to journalists last week that he never considered a plea offer. The terms of that offer, which presumably would have reduced Shkreli’s punishment at sentencing, were not revealed.
An angry Benjamin Brafman, Shkreli’s lead lawyer, said Shkreli “categorically” refused to even consider a plea deal with the prosecution, although Brafman conceded he himself had reached out to prosecutors about a potential deal.
Brafman said Shkreli told him, “I would never plead guilty to something I did not do. … We’re going to trial.”
Brafman said that he was bound ethically to see if the case could be resolved before going to trial to protect the interests of his client.
