WEBVTT - Bloomberg Law Brief: Walters Convicted Guilty (Audio)

0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:03.279
<v Speaker 1>And now time for our daily Bloomberg labrary if exploring

0:00:03.360 --> 0:00:06.040
<v Speaker 1>legal issues in the news. Today, Bloomberg lawhost Student Grosso

0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:09.160
<v Speaker 1>and Michael Best discussed the insider trading case of Las

0:00:09.240 --> 0:00:12.119
<v Speaker 1>Vegas gambler Billy Walters, who was found guilty in a

0:00:12.160 --> 0:00:14.800
<v Speaker 1>New York court on Friday. They speak to Peter Henning,

0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:18.119
<v Speaker 1>a professor at Wayne State University, and Robert Hacketts, a

0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:22.360
<v Speaker 1>professor at Cornell University Law School. Peter, how important was

0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:26.960
<v Speaker 1>this win for federal prosecutors? Well, it was important because

0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:30.800
<v Speaker 1>it was so high profile. Billy Walters is maybe the

0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:36.159
<v Speaker 1>most famous defendant since Raja Gupta, who was the former

0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:41.760
<v Speaker 1>director at Goldman Sachs. And it just almost had a

0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:45.640
<v Speaker 1>tabloid feel to it, with Phil Mickelson and Carl Icon's

0:00:45.720 --> 0:00:51.000
<v Speaker 1>name coming up the government FBI agent leaking information back

0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:55.680
<v Speaker 1>in twenty uh fourteen about the case. In a sense,

0:00:56.480 --> 0:00:59.840
<v Speaker 1>it was high profile because it was tabloid. Um, the

0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:03.520
<v Speaker 1>legal issues really weren't all that difficult. Um And even

0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:08.480
<v Speaker 1>if that Newman case from fourteen had remained, the government

0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:13.480
<v Speaker 1>had evidence that um, some of the inside information was

0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:17.000
<v Speaker 1>to help pay off loans, so it would not have

0:01:17.160 --> 0:01:19.920
<v Speaker 1>raised the issue of friendship at least not as much.

0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:24.560
<v Speaker 1>So it's important because it's high profile, Bob. The defense

0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:28.360
<v Speaker 1>seemed to argue that the only way the jury could

0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:31.480
<v Speaker 1>convict Walter's here was if they believed Tom Davis, the

0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:35.040
<v Speaker 1>former chairman of Dean Foods, who was passing information to

0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:38.720
<v Speaker 1>Walter's and they argued that he was lying, he had debts,

0:01:38.760 --> 0:01:41.759
<v Speaker 1>he was he had done all sorts of unsavory things. Um,

0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:45.600
<v Speaker 1>how much did the case really rely on Davis's testimony?

0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:48.640
<v Speaker 1>I don't actually think that the case was all that

0:01:48.680 --> 0:01:51.440
<v Speaker 1>reliant on davis The testimony. There was a lot of

0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:54.480
<v Speaker 1>circumstantial evidence as well, in the form of, for example,

0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:57.440
<v Speaker 1>phone records, right, so Mr Davis of course would pass

0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:01.880
<v Speaker 1>on the information uh Toms Walters, and Mr Walters would

0:02:01.920 --> 0:02:05.440
<v Speaker 1>then oftentimes phone to place his trades literally within the

0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:07.720
<v Speaker 1>same minute that he got off of the phone with

0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:10.000
<v Speaker 1>Mr Davis. So if you've got a pattern of that

0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:13.160
<v Speaker 1>sort that's sort of repeated over and over and over again,

0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:16.400
<v Speaker 1>all that Mr Davis's testimony actually ends up doing is

0:02:16.400 --> 0:02:18.560
<v Speaker 1>sort of providing a little bit of narrative context, a

0:02:18.560 --> 0:02:21.040
<v Speaker 1>little bit of extra color. But as far as the

0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:23.919
<v Speaker 1>sort of fundamental evidence, that's needed to convict us concerns.

0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:26.760
<v Speaker 1>It seems that that was actually all available even without

0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:30.960
<v Speaker 1>Mr Davis. That's Robert Hockett, Professor at Cornell University Law School,

0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:34.120
<v Speaker 1>and Peter Henning, professor at Wayne State University, speaking to

0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:36.800
<v Speaker 1>Bloomberg Law host stud In Grosso and Michael Best. You

0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:39.960
<v Speaker 1>can hear Bloomberg Law weekdays at one pm aall street

0:02:39.960 --> 0:02:43.440
<v Speaker 1>time here on Bloomberg Radio, and that's this morning's Bloomberg

0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:45.520
<v Speaker 1>Law bree If you can find more legal news at

0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:50.040
<v Speaker 1>Bloomberg Law dot com and Bloomberg Bienna dot com. Attorneys

0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:53.600
<v Speaker 1>will find exceptional legal research and business development tools there

0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:56.799
<v Speaker 1>as well. Is a Bloomberg Law dot com and Bloomberg

0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:59.440
<v Speaker 1>Bna dot com for more information