Judge to Shkreli: Button it up
NEW YORK — A U.S. district judge on Wednesday chastised Martin Shkreli, the boisterous former hedge-fund manager and pharmaceuticalindustry executive, for speaking to the media during the early days of his trial for securities fraud.
“All your client has to do is stop talking in the courthouse and around the perimeter of the courthouse,” a frustrated U.S. District JudgeKiyoMatsumotosaid.
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. Marshall 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,” Matsumoto said.
Prosecutors asked that either Shkreli be ordered to keep quiet or the jury be semi-sequestered so they could not hear chatter in the hallways about the trial or comments made by Shkreli. Brafman said that his client was being “baited,” particularly by a reporter who peppers him with questions when he leaves the courtroom. Maneuvering the 100 yards between the courthouse steps and the car sometimes requires Shkreli to deal with a scrum of 40 to 50 members of the media, a stressful situation for someone with anxiety such as Shkreli, Brafman said.
The judge told Shkreli to no longer speak to reporters about the case in the courtroom or on the street outside.