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By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive Patreon
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SDNY COURTHOUSE, Jan 7 – Bryan Cohen, a Goldman Sachs banker charged with insider trading with the same cooperating witness as Telemaque Lavidas now on trial, on January 7 pled guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

  The US Attorney's Office did not publicize the proceeding or its 30 to 37 month plea deal, but Inner City Press was in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Magistrates Court as the only media, and spoke afterward with Cohen's defense lawyer Benjamin Brafman. More on Patreon here.

  Brafman told Inner City Press the connection to the Lavidas trial is the same cooperating witness. More formally, he said that "To his credit, Mr. Cohen has accepted responsibility for his conduct and will thereby avoid a trial. We are hopeful that at sentencing we will be able to pursuade Judge Pauley that despite his criminal conduct Mr. Cohen is a fundamentally decent young man who should be sentenced in a relatively lenient fashion."

  In the proceeding, Magistrate Judge Debra Freeman accepted a consent order of forfeiture for $260,000. The sentencing will be before Judge William H. Pauley III on April 3 at noon. The case is US v. Cohen, 19-cr-741 (Pauley).

  On January 6, the trial of Telemaque Lavidas began before Judge Denise Cote. Assistant US Attorney Daniel Tracer in a short opening statement described it as an open and cut case, which will include cooperating witness Marc Demane.

  Lavidas' lawyer John Streeter told that jury Demane is simply trying to reduce his sentence and has no first hand information. Here's some of how it went, live-tweeted here.

 Hours after the opening statements, the US Attorney office asked Judge Cote to ban discussion of how it conducted its investigation: "Based on the contents of defense counsel’s opening statement, the Government respectfully requests a ruling in limine precluding the defense from introducing evidence about investigative techniques that the Government employed during the course of the investigation. As set forth below, such evidence improperly suggests that the jury shift its attention from the charges against the defendant to the conduct of the investigation, and is irrelevant and misleading. 1. Background In opening statements, defense counsel on two separate occasions engaged in a recitation of the Government’s investigation and the various investigative steps that have been taken with respect both to this defendant and other individuals. For example, defense counsel said: The third thing is that you are going to learn that the government gathered millions and millions of e-mails and text messages and electronic devices, phones and computers and all kinds of evidence from this huge network of people who were engaging in insider trading – from Demane, from Nikas, from their whole network. And you are also going to learn that they gathered e-mails, and phones, and computers and all kinds of other evidence from Mr. Lavidas. (Tr. 32). Later in his opening, defense counsel returned to the same topic: The third thing that I mentioned is that the government has been investigating this case for years. They have collected millions of e-mails and text messages. And they have collected Mr. Lavidas’s phones, his iPad, his computer, his documents. They have collected a long list of phones, computers, disc drives from Mr. Nikas. They collected a long list of those same things from Mr. Demane. And they collected those same things secretly, for years, from Google and other companies where their e-mail accounts were.... The Government respectfully requests that the Court preclude the defendant from introducing evidence about investigative techniques that the Government employed during the course of the investigation."

  The US Attorney doesn't want the jury to hear about this. And the public? Inner City Press will continue to cover this case.