Judge asked to silence defendant

Federal prosecutors have asked the judge overseeing Martin Shkreli’s fraud trial to issue a rule of silence, arguing that Shkreli has made a spectacle of the proceedings.

Shkreli, 34, faces eight counts of securities and wire fraud relating to his management of two hedge funds and a pharmaceutical company. His trial in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., started last week.

Shkreli often holds live chats on social media after returning home from court. And on Friday, he stopped by a room where several journalists were working for an on-therecord chat. He called the prosecutors on the case “junior varsity” and argued that a woman who had testified about her tangled investment in his hedge fund was not a “victim,” according to CNBC.