Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Brusso from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court has issued twenty opinions in argued cases
Speaker 1: so far this term, and fifteen of them have been unanimous.
Speaker 1: That may seem unusual for a court that's often split
Speaker 1: down ideological lines in controversial cases since the three Trump
Speaker 1: appointees joined the court, leading to a super conservative majority,
Speaker 1: but Chief Justice John Roberts has often talked about the
Speaker 1: importance of unanimity.
Speaker 2: I still think it's an important objective one because I
Speaker 2: think judicial decisions should be narrower rather than broader, and
Speaker 2: the way to do that is to try to get
Speaker 2: as many people on board as you can. That you know,
Speaker 2: if you're going to reach a broad decision that's going
Speaker 2: to cover all sorts of different factional scenarios, a lot
Speaker 2: of people are going to say, well, WHOA, I'm not
Speaker 2: quite sure I agree with that. They might write something narrow,
Speaker 2: But if you keep it narrow that it only decides
Speaker 2: what's absolutely necessary to be decided. Usually you can get
Speaker 2: more people to agree with that one.
Speaker 1: But in the next two months, as decisions are handed
Speaker 1: down in controversial cases involving abortion, guns, racial gerrymandering and
Speaker 1: presidential immunity, you can expect that unanimity to evaporate. Joining
Speaker 1: me is John Elwood, the head of the appelladan Supreme
Speaker 1: Court practice at Arnold and Porter. He's been before the
Speaker 1: justices many times. For those who are not familiar, will
Speaker 1: you explain the process the justices go through in making
Speaker 1: these decisions once they've heard oral arguments?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: The Supreme Court here is argument for basically two weeks
Speaker 3: every month between October and April, and at the end
Speaker 3: of I think each week of argument they vote on
Speaker 3: which position everyone's going to take on every case. And
Speaker 3: I believe that at the end of the whole sitting
Speaker 3: there's a kind of a final tally where the person
Speaker 3: who is presiding, that is, the senior most justice in
Speaker 3: the majority, assigns opinions to all of the justices in
Speaker 3: a way that tries to give them kind of an
Speaker 3: equal share of cases, an equal number of authorships.
Speaker 1: Twenty opinions and argued cases this term fifteen have been unanimous.
Speaker 1: I know the Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Cony
Speaker 1: Barrett also has talked about how you know we're unanimous
Speaker 1: on the majority of cases, but tell us about the
Speaker 1: kinds of cases they're unanimous on.
Speaker 3: Well, most of the cases that have been decided so
Speaker 3: far are not the kind of read letter, big ticket
Speaker 3: to mix metaphors cases for the term, they're more generally
Speaker 3: the Duller cases. There are a few cases that are
Speaker 3: more noteworthy which were nonetheless unanimous, which were likely unanimous
Speaker 3: because they were so narrow, like, for example, there were
Speaker 3: the social media blocking cases link Keepers is Freedom O'Connor
Speaker 3: rat Clippers's garner, which involved a fairly big ticket issue
Speaker 3: about whether when public officials block people on social media
Speaker 3: that is essentially state actions, it is regulated by the
Speaker 3: First Amendment. And that was the case that really the
Speaker 3: justices seem to have some trouble grappling with an argument,
Speaker 3: but they decided very little of it. They decided a
Speaker 3: fairly narrow rule and left most of the applications for
Speaker 3: reman and so I think that would have been a
Speaker 3: very easy case to not be unanimous if they had
Speaker 3: decided it any more broadly than they did.
Speaker 1: So are they trying to present a picture of unanimity
Speaker 1: with these cases by, as you say, either limiting them
Speaker 1: or you know, choosing cases that are not hot button.
Speaker 3: Issues well, to begin with, one of the things I
Speaker 3: like to emphasize is that when you're dealing with such
Speaker 3: small numbers, it doesn't take much for things to seem
Speaker 3: like outliers. You know, when you're dealing with just like
Speaker 3: eighteen cases, it only takes something like four extra cases
Speaker 3: to go from an ordinary term to an really unusual
Speaker 3: high water mark of unanimity. And so this is something
Speaker 3: that I always try to emphasize. When you're dealing with
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court, the numbers are so small that it
Speaker 3: doesn't take much for things to look like you have
Speaker 3: some real outlier term or real weird trend. But with that,
Speaker 3: you know, I do think that the Roberts Court does
Speaker 3: try to emphasize unanimity. They also there may be a
Speaker 3: different dynamic in that, you know, they're trying to get
Speaker 3: cases out because they are relatively behind in getting opinions out,
Speaker 3: and so they may just you know, be writing opinions
Speaker 3: narrowly so they can clear those cases out, get them
Speaker 3: out so they can focus on the remaining cases. So
Speaker 3: there are a number of reasons why they might be
Speaker 3: doing it this way. I do think that they try
Speaker 3: to be unanimous whenever they can it's kind of part
Speaker 3: of the ethos the Roberts' Court. John Roberts cares about it,
Speaker 3: and I think he tries to job on other people
Speaker 3: into feeling the same way that maybe that they're taking
Speaker 3: relatively few cases. There are very low number of grants'
Speaker 3: term and it may be that they are picking out
Speaker 3: cases that they feel there's a pair amount of unanimity
Speaker 3: end and it may be that they're, you know, kind
Speaker 3: of clearing the wave for more contentious issues which have
Speaker 3: yet to be decided.
Speaker 1: Every year, the cases that we're waiting for involving hot
Speaker 1: button issues come down at the end of June, sometimes
Speaker 1: the last two days of June, before they go on vacation.
Speaker 1: Is there a reason for that or is it just
Speaker 1: a decision to leave the most controversial cases until the
Speaker 1: final days.
Speaker 3: I think a lot is just explained by the practicality
Speaker 3: of it, which is that descending opinions take more time,
Speaker 3: and sometimes in the most contentious cases there's back and
Speaker 3: forth between the descent and the majority opinion, and when
Speaker 3: people are fine tuning opinions, you know, in draft after
Speaker 3: draft after draft, it can go kind of down to
Speaker 3: the wire. So I think much of it is explained
Speaker 3: simply by the practicality of you know, more opinions, more drafts,
Speaker 3: take more.
Speaker 1: Time, And will you explain the process of circulating the
Speaker 1: opinions so all the justices see what others have written
Speaker 1: and can respond to it.
Speaker 3: That's right. A majority opinions circulate, Descending opinions then circulate,
Speaker 3: and each subsequent draft is then circulated to the entire group,
Speaker 3: and then you know, justices who are joining opinions may
Speaker 3: ask for changes. Justices who are joining descent may ask
Speaker 3: for changes. Authors of both majority opinions and authors of
Speaker 3: the sense may tweak their opinions to respond to the
Speaker 3: opinions on the other side, and each of those opinions
Speaker 3: will be circulated as a whole group with a red line,
Speaker 3: so everyone knows what's new and what's been changed is
Speaker 3: the last draft.
Speaker 1: I guess that does show why it takes so long. Now,
Speaker 1: as far as the oral arguments go, and everyone says,
Speaker 1: you can tell what the decision will be from the
Speaker 1: oral arguments, but can you sort of figure out the
Speaker 1: broad strokes of the decision from the oral arguments? Have
Speaker 1: you ever been totally surprised by a decision?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Wow? I never expected that.
Speaker 3: There have been some that surprised me. There was a
Speaker 3: case many years ago when the oral argument was still
Speaker 3: in a pretty rigidly one hour format where there was
Speaker 3: actually kind of a reversal of positions that the position
Speaker 3: that Justice Stevens seemed to be advocating wound up being
Speaker 3: taken up by Justice Scalia and vice versa. But I think,
Speaker 3: especially under the new format, which essentially goes on as
Speaker 3: long as the justices have questions, I think oral argument
Speaker 3: is a much better predictor of where people are going
Speaker 3: to come out in the end. There are fewer surprises,
Speaker 3: I think under the sort of format because all of
Speaker 3: the issues are thoroughly ventilated the court.
Speaker 1: It's been said a million times, but it's at its
Speaker 1: lowest approval rating since they've been taking those polls. Do
Speaker 1: you think that that matters to the justices or not.
Speaker 1: They're there for life.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I don't think that they're unmindful of it.
Speaker 3: But I think that they kind of do the same
Speaker 3: thing year in and year out. They go in and
Speaker 3: they decide the cases, you know, the way they feel
Speaker 3: that they should be decided. You know, they may try
Speaker 3: to be more unanimous in a particular case or decide
Speaker 3: an issue more narrowly. And I do think that they're
Speaker 3: generally kind of an incremental and minimalist court in the
Speaker 3: sense that I think that they try to decide, and
Speaker 3: many times they try to decide the least that they
Speaker 3: can decide so well. I don't think that they're unmindful
Speaker 3: of it. They read the newspapers. I don't think that
Speaker 3: they let it shape their behavior. I think that they
Speaker 3: I'm kind of one of those pollyannas. You think that
Speaker 3: they really try to just do justice, or they try
Speaker 3: to follow the law in every case.
Speaker 1: As you're talking about the oral arguments as someone who's argued,
Speaker 1: I mean, do the lawyers like the arguments that often
Speaker 1: do go on for hours?
Speaker 3: You know. I actually had a conversation with several other
Speaker 3: kind of repeat players the other day on this, and
Speaker 3: I think generally one thing we like about it is
Speaker 3: that it really does allow everybody to be kind of
Speaker 3: heard fully, and I think that that generally is a
Speaker 3: favorable thing. The downside is that it makes it harder
Speaker 3: to argue more cases. That you can essentially fully ventilate
Speaker 3: one controversial case per day, but if you have a
Speaker 3: second argument it's going to get much more summary treatment,
Speaker 3: and you know that that makes it kind of more
Speaker 3: difficult for the court to hear more cases.
Speaker 1: And they've been cutting down on the number of cases
Speaker 1: that they.
Speaker 3: Take each year, and it's kind of at low low
Speaker 3: EP right now. You know, it's kind of more in
Speaker 3: the sixty case range. And I don't know if they're
Speaker 3: related or not, since they don't explain what they're doing,
Speaker 3: I don't know if they're related. But one consequence of
Speaker 3: the longer world argument format is that it makes it
Speaker 3: harder to hear two cases.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining me today. I appreciate your insights,
Speaker 1: especially knowing that you've argued some ten times before the justices.
Speaker 1: That's John Elwood, head of the Appellatan Supreme Court practice
Speaker 1: at Arnold and Porter. The Supreme Court handed down two
Speaker 1: decisions today and neither of them was unanimous. Coming up
Speaker 1: next on the Bloomberg Lawn Show, we'll get an update
Speaker 1: from Donald Trump's hush money trial. This is Bloomberg. Stormy
Speaker 1: Daniels finished her testimony today at Donald Trump's hush money trial.
Speaker 1: The question is did the adult film star help prosecutors
Speaker 1: prove the former president falsified business records. Joining me now
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg Legal reporter David Voriakiz, who's covering the trial
Speaker 1: for us. All in all, what was your take on
Speaker 1: Stormy Daniel's testimony? Was she credible or not?
Speaker 4: Stormy Daniels gave in passionate testimony that she had a
Speaker 4: sexual encounter with Donald Trump in a Lake Tahoe hotel
Speaker 4: room in two thousand and six, and that, despite very
Speaker 4: intense cross examination, that she was not backing down from
Speaker 4: that account and that she was not motivated by making money,
Speaker 4: even though Trump's lawyer Susan Necklace crossed her on how
Speaker 4: she had made more than a million dollars in various
Speaker 4: commercial ventures based on her account of having sex with Trump,
Speaker 4: and how she had changed key details of that encounter
Speaker 4: a number of times since this happened eighteen years ago.
Speaker 4: And so what Trump's lawyer was trying to do was
Speaker 4: raise serious doubts about her credibility before the jury, and
Speaker 4: Stormy Daniels was able to stick to her basic account.
Speaker 4: She sparred with Trump's lawyer Susan Necklace, and while she
Speaker 4: wobbled a bit, she stuck to her core story and
Speaker 4: was not shaken off of that.
Speaker 1: Seems like the testimony is going from you know, compelling
Speaker 1: witness to the paperwork. And it is a case about
Speaker 1: business records. So who was on the stand next?
Speaker 4: The next witness was a publishing executive, and then we
Speaker 4: heard from Medline Westerhouse, who was Trump's assistant just outside
Speaker 4: the Oval office, who testified about how she handled Trump's
Speaker 4: payment of personal bills. This matters in this case because,
Speaker 4: of course Trump was accused of falsifying corporate records to
Speaker 4: hide his repayment to Michael Cohen of one hundred and
Speaker 4: thirty thousand dollars that he paid to Stormy Daniels. And
Speaker 4: I should also say that after the final witness, a
Speaker 4: Trump's lawyer, Todd Blanche renewed a mistrial emotion that he's
Speaker 4: made on Tuesday, saying that the judge allowed a great
Speaker 4: deal of prejudicial testimony by Stormy Daniels about the sexual
Speaker 4: encounter that was improper. The judge said that essentially the
Speaker 4: defense had opened the door to that by attacking her
Speaker 4: credibility in their opening statement and saying that the sexual
Speaker 4: encounter did not occur, And so the judge said, well,
Speaker 4: the proseputor was then allowed to bring her on to
Speaker 4: say that yes, it did occur. Todd Blanche also asked
Speaker 4: the judge to modify his gag order on Donald Trump
Speaker 4: to allow him to respond to the Stormy Daniels testimony.
Speaker 4: The judge refused to.
Speaker 1: Do that, and did that argument get heated?
Speaker 4: Yes, it was quite a heated argument for a good
Speaker 4: while after the end of trial testimony and judge was
Speaker 4: Stinelass came back for the prosecutors and essentially said, you
Speaker 4: know that all of Todd Blanche's arguments were misguided and
Speaker 4: that the prosecution did nothing improper in eliciting Stormy Daniels
Speaker 4: testimony about what happened in the hotel room in the
Speaker 4: Tao in two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: Since Tuesday, has Trump been following the gag order.
Speaker 4: There have been no complaints from the prosecutors that he
Speaker 4: has violated the gag order. He's obviously very angry about
Speaker 4: Stormy daniels testimony. The judge admonished him in a sidebar
Speaker 4: when he was cursing at Stormy Daniels on Tuesday. But
Speaker 4: as far as I know, he hasn't said anything publicly
Speaker 4: about Stormy Daniels or any other witnesses to violate the
Speaker 4: gag order. Essentially, Todd Blanche asked the judge to allow
Speaker 4: the Jackles off so that Trump could talk freely to
Speaker 4: the public and on a campaign trail about Stormy Daniels,
Speaker 4: and the judge said that that would imperil the integrity
Speaker 4: of the proceedings, and he denied them.
Speaker 1: What does the jury have to believe from Stormy daniels
Speaker 1: testimony to make the prosecution's case? I mean, did the
Speaker 1: prosecution even have to call her as a witness?
Speaker 4: And that's an excellent question. It's possible to argue that
Speaker 4: the prosecution could have made their case without Stormy daniels testimony.
Speaker 4: It doesn't matter whether they really had sex or not.
Speaker 4: What matters is that he paid hush payment days before
Speaker 4: the twenty sixteen election to prevent her from going public
Speaker 4: with her account, whether it's true or not. And the trial,
Speaker 4: of course, is about you falsifying records to cover up
Speaker 4: that payment. What the judge said and what the prosecutor
Speaker 4: said is that the testimony by Stormy Daniels was important
Speaker 4: because the defense had called her credibility into question and
Speaker 4: said that this never happened, and so the prosecutor said
Speaker 4: that they needed an opportunity to put her on the
Speaker 4: witness and essentially to show that she was a credible
Speaker 4: witness and that her account was important to complete the story.
Speaker 4: You know why it was that Donald Trump was paying
Speaker 4: the hush money that he paid.
Speaker 1: Has the prosecution decided not to call Karen McDougall.
Speaker 4: The prosecution said they were not calling Karen McDougall. We
Speaker 4: did not get an explanation from the prosecution on that.
Speaker 4: We actually learned that from a defense lawyer in an
Speaker 4: argument before the judge.
Speaker 1: Who's on the stand tomorrow when they.
Speaker 4: Resume as usual. The prosecutors have not said who they're
Speaker 4: calling next. But the big remaining witness is Michael.
Speaker 1: Colin, and that cross examination maybe epic. Thanks so much, David.
Speaker 1: That's Bloomberg Legal reporter David Voriachis. The dramatic twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one collapse of our Chagos Capital Management will be replayed
Speaker 1: in a criminal trial over the next two months, as
Speaker 1: prosecutors tried to convict founder Bill Wanog for market manipulation, racketeering,
Speaker 1: and fraud. In announcing the charges a year ago, Damian Williams,
Speaker 1: the US attorney for the Southern District of New York
Speaker 1: called it a market manipulation scheme that nearly jeopardized our
Speaker 1: financial system.
Speaker 5: The scheme was a historical scope. We alleged defendants and
Speaker 5: their co conspirators live banks to obtain billions of dollars
Speaker 5: that they then used to inflaye the sock price of
Speaker 5: a number of public retreated companies. The lies that the inflation,
Speaker 5: and the inflation that more lives round and round it way.
Speaker 1: Prosecutors say Wog misled some of Wall Streets biggest banks
Speaker 1: into inflating the value of our Chago's holdings to as
Speaker 1: high as one hundred and sixty billion dollars before the
Speaker 1: family Office imploded, all but erasing his thirty six billion
Speaker 1: dollar fortune. Jury's selection has begun in the case, and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Legal reporter Chrystal Mesh is covering the trial for US.
Speaker 1: Tell us about Bill Wang? Who is he?
Speaker 6: So Bill Wang? He's a Tiger cub from Julian Robertson's
Speaker 6: camp at Tiger Management. The late Julian Robertson, legendary trader
Speaker 6: who trained quite a few people to become traders and
Speaker 6: kind of launch their own funds and firms. So Bill
Speaker 6: started under him and learned the ropes, and then around
Speaker 6: I think it's two thousand and one he started his
Speaker 6: own firm with some money from Julian roberts I think
Speaker 6: twenty five million, so he ran that. It was called
Speaker 6: Tiger Global Asia, you know, took the name from Robertson
Speaker 6: and mainly traded in Asia stocks, but had to eventually
Speaker 6: the firm pleaded guilty to a kind of a stock sandal,
Speaker 6: basically involving tips on Asian equities. He didn't admit any wrongdoing,
Speaker 6: but he settled. But as a result he formed a
Speaker 6: family office. It became our Chagos and basically did the
Speaker 6: same kind of thing trading, made a lot of money
Speaker 6: and then, as everybody knows, blew up in March twenty
Speaker 6: twenty one whether the trade went south.
Speaker 1: He's very religious and he sort of likes to spread
Speaker 1: his faith. I mean, tell me about that aspect of him.
Speaker 6: Yes, very much. In fact, you know, an interesting part
Speaker 6: about this trials we've seen Christianity today. The periodical that
Speaker 6: covers religion and Christianity is here for the trial, so
Speaker 6: that kind of tells the first Yes, definitely never seen
Speaker 6: them before, so definitely preaches his faith. He said he
Speaker 6: invests basically, you know, he takes his hints from the Bible,
Speaker 6: tries to invest in things that he thinks, you know,
Speaker 6: the Lord would want him to invest in. He started
Speaker 6: his own foundation, the Grace and Mercy Foundation, to further
Speaker 6: that goal of religious education. He says, he reads the
Speaker 6: Bible religiously, and we won't know how much of that
Speaker 6: will come up during the trial, and the government pretty
Speaker 6: much wanted to kind of limit that kind of arguments
Speaker 6: about his good acts and his faith, and the judge said,
Speaker 6: we're not going to really go into that. It's hard
Speaker 6: to say how much of that is actually going to
Speaker 6: come up, but one can't imagine that it won't come
Speaker 6: up at all through the witnesses.
Speaker 1: Tell us what he's charged with.
Speaker 6: There are two defendants, so there's Bill Long who was
Speaker 6: the founder, and then the CFO, Patrick Halligan, who's not
Speaker 6: charged in quite so big of a scheme. So Bill
Speaker 6: was basically charged with conspiring with traders at the firm
Speaker 6: to trade. Essentially, he traded on swap, so he was
Speaker 6: trading on margin. But the government's allegation said he was
Speaker 6: trading on margin with multiple firms who didn't really realize
Speaker 6: the level of his exposure, and the allegation so that
Speaker 6: he did this to manipulate the market and drive up
Speaker 6: interest in the stocks that he had invested in, so
Speaker 6: that when you know, his margin ran out and there's
Speaker 6: the banks started to make margin calls because he had
Speaker 6: gotten more credit. Suddenly the stocks started plummeting because they
Speaker 6: realized suddenly how exposed he was. So he's kind of
Speaker 6: accused of that market man infization scheme. And separately, he's
Speaker 6: also accused with the CFO of attempting to mislead the
Speaker 6: banks and fool them into not knowing that he had
Speaker 6: these kind of lines of credit with other institutions.
Speaker 1: I've read that his strategy in retrospect was like market suicide,
Speaker 1: and one of his attorneys said, he never sold a
Speaker 1: nickel of his shares. Does anyone know what the point
Speaker 1: of this was?
Speaker 6: Well, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 6: The judge has questioned the prosecutors like, what was the
Speaker 6: goal of this if he lost all his money? So
Speaker 6: I think that's going to be the main point of
Speaker 6: the defense here is they argue he wasn't trying to
Speaker 6: manipulate the market that he was making on its trades
Speaker 6: and that it fell out for under him, and they
Speaker 6: essentially argued that the banks did their own due diligence.
Speaker 6: These are very sophisticated in institutions that did their own research,
Speaker 6: that weren't going to extend credit unless they felt comfortable
Speaker 6: with doing so, and that at the same token, you know,
Speaker 6: they were required to hedge his trades through the contract
Speaker 6: by buying whenever he decided to trade the options. They
Speaker 6: were forced to buy the schairs and the underlying stocks
Speaker 6: as a hedge. He argues that rather than just a
Speaker 6: one for one hedge, one share for every time he bought,
Speaker 6: they were going out and very broadly hedging this and
Speaker 6: therefore kind of he says that underminds the argument that
Speaker 6: the banks didn't know what was going on.
Speaker 1: The key is that the prosecutors say he lied to
Speaker 1: the banks they were barring from and used the swaps
Speaker 1: to conceal the huge positions that he was in. Right,
Speaker 1: So this is federal court. So the judges doing the
Speaker 1: questioning for the jury selection, this case sounds like it
Speaker 1: could be a bit complicated. What kind of jurors are
Speaker 1: they looking for?
Speaker 6: So it's hard to say on that end, but jury
Speaker 6: selection it's been very interesting in this case. Normally when
Speaker 6: we do jury selection, every judge is different, but generally,
Speaker 6: you know, they'll bring a lot of jerors into a courtroom.
Speaker 6: They'll you know, ask them if they have time constraints,
Speaker 6: they'll go through their individual history to see if you know,
Speaker 6: they know any of the witnesses or any of the
Speaker 6: parties involved in the case, and then they'll just kind
Speaker 6: of go through what they call bar geer and and
Speaker 6: ask them about, you know, what they read, what, you know,
Speaker 6: what they know about that sort of thing. In this case,
Speaker 6: the judge, because it's going to be a two month trial,
Speaker 6: brought them all in yesterday, brought in the jurors one
Speaker 6: by one and asked them if they could sit for
Speaker 6: two months, that was really it, and if they could,
Speaker 6: they went home for the day and they all came
Speaker 6: back today and they began the process of whittling down
Speaker 6: the jury. So obviously this morning there's lots of questions
Speaker 6: about financial institutions, did you work with the counterparties involved.
Speaker 6: There's more than you know, three dozen witnesses on the
Speaker 6: witness list from counterparties here and multiple banks. So they're
Speaker 6: slowly kind of going through each institution and you know,
Speaker 6: people who have had experience with law enforcement. But we
Speaker 6: really haven't gotten to any kind of individual whittling down.
Speaker 6: So it's kind of hard to see what the strategy
Speaker 6: is behind the jury selection at this point. But I
Speaker 6: will say that the judges made it clear, like many
Speaker 6: judges do, that he wants a big cross section of
Speaker 6: life experiences and things like that on the jury. So
Speaker 6: there's all kinds of people. We've got a general counsel
Speaker 6: for newspapers, We've got people who worked in finance, We've
Speaker 6: got people who worked in construction. We've seen just the
Speaker 6: whole gamut of different occupation through the last two days.
Speaker 1: And now who's expected to testify? Do we know like
Speaker 1: who the main witnesses will be.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So the two big star witnesses or is former
Speaker 6: head trader William Tamida and the former head of risk management,
Speaker 6: which was Scott Becker, and they have both pled guilty
Speaker 6: and agreed to cooperate against him, so they formed the
Speaker 6: majority of the government's case against him. Like I said,
Speaker 6: they will bring up witnesses from the counter parties from
Speaker 6: Credit Suite and many of the other banks likely who
Speaker 6: will testify about you know, their reaction to finding out
Speaker 6: about how exposed our Chagos was, and we should have also,
Speaker 6: like some analysts from the cell side, and also we'll
Speaker 6: definitely have multiple experts from both parties. Beyond that, we're
Speaker 6: still waiting to hear some names of some of the
Speaker 6: people who will be on the witness list.
Speaker 1: I understand that the defense may argue that the prosecution
Speaker 1: is pushing this novel market manipulation theory. Is this the
Speaker 1: first time that the Feds have prosecuted a case like this,
Speaker 1: and maybe this is the first time a case like
Speaker 1: this has happened.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's definitely kind of the first time that the
Speaker 6: government has kind of brought this kind of broad market
Speaker 6: manipulation scheme. There have been others, but none of them
Speaker 6: have been quite as widespread and infamous. Really, many of
Speaker 6: them have been in kind of niche markets things like that,
Speaker 6: And so it's definitely one of the more interesting prosecutions
Speaker 6: that we've seen a white collar crime in years.
Speaker 1: So Wall Street is watching this, I take it for sure.
Speaker 6: Now, let's be clear, Archie Ghost doesn't exist. Credit Suite
Speaker 6: is bought by UPS and the fallout was broad from this,
Speaker 6: but it's not like there's going to be a broad
Speaker 6: impact on the market from what happens here, but it
Speaker 6: will be a message probably to family offices to be
Speaker 6: more prudent. And you know, there's no doubt that this
Speaker 6: is a fascinating episode in Wall Street history to the
Speaker 6: financial industry. So in that aspect, I think everybody will
Speaker 6: be watching it.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in the judge, Alvin Hellerstein. He's known for
Speaker 1: overseeing the long litigation stemming from the September eleventh terrorist attack.
Speaker 1: And is he ninety years old? Because that gives us
Speaker 1: all hope for the future.
Speaker 6: The judge is ninety years old, you would find it
Speaker 6: hard to believe, given that he went through eight plus
Speaker 6: hours of jury selection yesterday and he candidly admitted he
Speaker 6: was exhausted at the end, but he was back at
Speaker 6: it today. Alvit heller seems a very interesting man. He's
Speaker 6: clearly got his head in the trial. You don't see
Speaker 6: many jurors giving h related excuses.
Speaker 1: What do we know about the prosecutors in the case.
Speaker 6: They've all got some sort of experience in white collar prosecutions.
Speaker 6: Here at the Southern District. Matthew Podolski, who you could
Speaker 6: probably say is the lead prosecutor's co chief of the
Speaker 6: Securities and Kabadie's task Force, and he was one of
Speaker 6: the lead prosecutors in the fraud case against the Nicola Corp.
Speaker 6: Founder Trevor Milton, who was sentenced to four years in
Speaker 6: prison last year for misleading investors about its prospects. Alex
Speaker 6: ross Miller, Alexander Rossman and Andrew Mark Thomas also have
Speaker 6: similar experience in white collar cases, but not as much
Speaker 6: as Podolski.
Speaker 1: And what about the defense attorneys.
Speaker 6: Well, Barry Burke is the defense attorney for Bill Long
Speaker 6: along with his colleagues Jordan Destie's and Dandy James. He's
Speaker 6: a very well known white collar defense attorney. Used to
Speaker 6: be a trial lawyer for the Federal Defender and he's
Speaker 6: represented many high profile white collar defendants. Served as Chief
Speaker 6: and Statement council for the House in the first Senate
Speaker 6: trial of Trump. And also Mary Mulligan is representing the
Speaker 6: CFO Patrick Calligan, and she's a former prosecutor and is
Speaker 6: also a veteran white collar defense attorney who represented the
Speaker 6: Trump Organization CFO Alan Weiselberg.
Speaker 1: Is there any talk of one taking the stand, Well.
Speaker 6: It's a little early for that. It's a great question.
Speaker 6: In every case, it's the question.
Speaker 1: I know, it's always the.
Speaker 6: Question defense case, which is, you know, a month away
Speaker 6: at the least. We haven't heard a lot of talk
Speaker 6: about that. And usually when it comes to white collar cases,
Speaker 6: and really in any kind of case, defendants aren't required
Speaker 6: to tell them if they're going to testify until really
Speaker 6: the last minute. And often, you know, it's really one
Speaker 6: of the only cards that the defense can pull out
Speaker 6: if they're not going to call a real robust case.
Speaker 6: So they like to keep that one close to their
Speaker 6: vest until they really get a sense of when they're
Speaker 6: going to do it. So I wouldn't expect to hear
Speaker 6: anything about that until we get really substantially deep into trial.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll be talking again soon. Thanks so much, Chris.
Speaker 1: That's Bloomberg Legal reporter Chris Dolmesh, and that's it for
Speaker 1: this edition of the Bloomberg Law Podcast. Remember you can
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