Professional golfer Phil Mickelson won’t be called to testify at gambler Billy Walters’s insider-trading trial because he’d invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, a defense lawyer told a judge.
The disclosure came at a sidebar conference between lawyers and the judge as they discussed whether the golfer would testify. Mickelson has become a titillating sideshow in the criminal case against Walters, 70, who’s accused of reaping about $43 million by trading on inside tips provided by Tom C. Davis, the former chairman of Dean Foods Co.
“He is on our witness list, but we understand from his counsel he would invoke his Fifth Amendment if called,” attorney Barry Berke said, according to a transcript of the conference. “So he will not be called as a witness, although his name will be mentioned."
The revelation that Mickelson is unlikely to testify is the latest twist in a high-stakes trial in Manhattan federal court against a Las Vegas legend often considered the nation’s most successful sports gambler. Besides the occasional celebrity name, Walters’s is the most significant insider-trading case since 2014, when the courts made it harder for the government to prove the crime.
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Mickelson isn’t accused of wrongdoing and his invocation of the Fifth Amendment would not be evidence he did anything improper. In a lawsuit against Walters last year, U.S. regulators said the three-time Masters champion made $931,000 trading on information about Dean Foods that he got from Walters, a golfing buddy. Regulators made no assertion he did anything wrong or that the golfer knew where Walters got his tips.
Mickelson agreed to repay his earnings.
Mickelson’s lawyer, Glenn Cohen and Edward Patrick Swan Jr., declined on Friday to comment on whether their client would invoke his Fifth Amendment right if called to testify, saying only that “the government does not list Phil Mickelson as a trial witness, and the defense lists Phil Mickelson only as a possible trial witness.”
Berke, Walters’s attorney, declined to comment, as did a spokesman for federal prosecutors in New York.
In the two weeks since the trial began, neither prosecutors nor the defense has been willing to say publicly whether they will summon Mickelson to the witness stand. Earlier this week, the golfer told a reporter that he won’t be called to testify because he’s “not a part” of the case. He didn’t disclose that he’d invoke his right against self-incrimination should he be called to testify.