Lawyers for New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver are seeking to have the charges against him dismissed on the grounds of "improper extrajudicial" comments by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara. (I somehow missed this last week when it was reported by the New York Times.)
The Times doesn't get into this, but if Mr. Silver's lawyers succeed with this angle, it's conceivable that it could have implications for the insider trading cases brought by Mr. Bharara, as well. Recall that even before bringing most of the cases, Mr. Bharara gave a speech to the New York City Bar Association in which he asserted that "illegal insider trading is rampant" and joked that defense lawyers wouldn't oppose his prosecutions because they would make money by billing the defendants targeted by them.