[ad_1]
Hours after a federal appeals court affirmed Martin Shkreli’s lifetime ban from the pharmaceutical industry, New York Attorney General Letitia James told a Manhattan judge on Tuesday the newfound precedent fits another case she brought.
The one against former President Donald Trump.
“In its appellate review, the Second Circuit unanimously affirmed in full the
district court’s order enjoining Martin Shkreli from participation in the pharmaceutical industry for life and ordering him to disgorge $64.6 million,” the attorney general’s assistant, Colleen K. Faherty, told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron in a single-page letter on Tuesday.
James’ office has been behind both the legal efforts to against Shkreli and Trump. The Federal Trade Commission was a co-plaintiff on Shkreli litigation, originally filed in federal court some four years ago. In 2022, a federal judge barred Shkreli from pharmaceutical industry for life over monopolistic behavior as the former CEO of Vyera Pharmaceuticals, leading to his dramatic price hikes of the life-saving drug Daraprim that earned him national notoriety and the nickname “Pharma Bro.”
In upholding that ban, a three judge panel from the Second Circuit found: “Given Shkreli’s pattern of past misconduct, the obvious likelihood of its recurrence, and the life-threatening nature of its results, we are persuaded that the district court’s determination as to the proper scope of the injunction was well within its discretion.”
The attorney general’s office recently asked Engoron to ban Trump and two of his former business associates — Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney — from New York’s real estate industry for fraudulently inflating the former president’s assets by billions of dollars on statements of financial condition. James also wants Trump to pay roughly $370 million in disgorgement of “ill-gotten gains,” including the favorable interest rates from allegedly sending Deutsche Bank a misleading portrait of his wealth to secure loans.
Donald Trump and Martin ShkreliSAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images; Kevin Hagen/Getty Images
Engoron has not yet issued a ruling on that request, but the judge previously issued an order to dissolve Trump’s New York businesses, in a ruling that remains under appeal.
Earlier this month, Engoron held closing arguments in Trump’s case, where the attorney general’s counsel invoked the famous Watergate question: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” Counsel Kevin Wallace applied the question, originally applied in the context of the Democratic National Committee headquarters break-in by Richard Nixon-linked burglars, to Trump’s knowledge that his statements of financial condition provided a misleading picture of his assets to banks and insurance companies.
Trump and his lawyers deny the allegations, arguing that — if anything — the former president should “get a medal” for his contributions to New York real estate, rather than a lifetime ban.
Little noticed at the time, the attorney general’s team cited a federal judge’s ruling against Shkreli at the trial level, which cited the same statute used against Trump.
A little more than two years ago, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote wrote in a ruling that upon “finding a violation under Executive Law §63(12), a court may exercise its discretion to issue a permanent and plenary ban in a particular industry.” That is the same statute James leveled against Trump.
Though the case against Shkreli transpired in federal courts, both made use of the same New York law empowering the attorney general to regulate the state’s visits.
Engoron signaled that he hoped to issue his ruling before the end of the month — but he could not “guarantee” that he would stick to that deadline.
[ad_2]
This article was originally published by a themessenger.com . Read the Original article here. .