Between telling reporters he can “do whatever he wants” and allegedly trolling Twitter with a secret account despite being banned from the website, “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli has apparently done plenty to irritate the federal judge presiding over his securities fraud trial. Hence why, after hearing a request for a gag order from the prosecution, U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto instructed Shkreli to stop discussing the trial in and around the courthouse during proceedings.
“All your client has to do is stop talking in the courthouse and around the perimeter of the courthouse,” the judge told the defendant’s attorney, Benjamin Brafman. In a motion filed late Monday, the prosecution surmised Shkreli’s continued public discussion of his trial — both in person to the press, and online as alleged — would ultimately reach the jury. “[I]t is only a matter of time before Shkreli, or a member of the public who is repeating Shkreli’s statements, exposes one or more jurors to precisely the sort of extrajudicial evidence or commentary and our system forbids.”
Aside from mouthing off to journalists about what he can and cannot do, Shkreli has derided the prosecution as the “junior varsity” and ridiculed one of their witnesses. As a result, the gag order request contends the so-called Pharma Bro is simply waging his own “campaign of disruption” in order to make “a spectacle of himself and the trial” in the hopes of diminishing the outcome. “I was shocked that there were these comments, these statements,” Judge Matsumoto reportedly said on Wednesday. “There’s a great risk jurors will be exposed.”
(Via NBC News)