JUDICIAL BIAS IS ALIVE AND WELL IN BROOKLYN
This week, attorneys for Carlos Watson filed motions to vacate his recent fraud conviction. At the heart of these motions are two damning allegations: that the judge provided faulty jury instructions and that newly uncovered financial conflicts should have disqualified Judge Eric Komitee from presiding over the case from the outset.
Judges must disclose their financial holdings publicly, but at the time of Watson’s trial, Judge Komitee had not released his 2023 financial disclosure. That changed on October 2, when, under pressure from Watson’s legal team, the judge’s financials were finally made public. What the records reveal is deeply troubling: Judge Komitee held significant investments—potentially worth tens of millions of dollars—in hedge funds with substantial positions in companies that featured prominently in the government’s case against Watson including Goldman, Google, JP Morgan and Live Nation.
Before joining the bench, Komitee served as chief counsel for Viking Global, a $50 billion hedge fund, where he personally signed off on the fund’s regulatory filings. He carried that intimate knowledge—and a personal stake in Viking’s holdings—into the courtroom. It defies belief that a judge with such connections could preside impartially over a case involving those same entities.
Federal judges have recused themselves for far less. Earlier this year, the Second Circuit ruled that a judge should have stepped aside from a case because his wife held a $15,000 investment through a Schwab account. One can imagine a judge being unaware of a modest investment buried in a spouse’s portfolio. But how does a judge “forget” that a significant portion of his wealth is tied to the alleged victims of the case before him? This is far from a harmless oversight. No wonder public trust in the judiciary is at an all-time low.
The injustice of this case becomes even clearer when you consider that OZY Media was, in fact, a real and valuable, Emmy Award-winning media company. Mr. Watson was an innovative entrepreneur who built a thriving startup from scratch. OZY attracted over 200 major clients—including Coca-Cola, Target, and Walmart—and employed nearly 1,000 full-time and freelance staff, 90% of whom were women or people of color. Yet instead of celebrating this achievement, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn spent somewhere between $10-20 millions of taxpayer money to destroy a thriving Black-owned business headquartered on the other side of the country.
The judge’s conflicts might explain his troubling behavior during the trial. I witnessed this firsthand as an expert witness for Watson’s defense, tasked with clarifying the complexities of startup financing. Judge Komitee’s bias was evident throughout the proceedings, both in ways that were obvious to the jury and ways that were not.
The blatant bias was unmistakable. When the prosecutor presented me with a fundamentally flawed question, I explained the logical fallacies. Rather than let the prosecution’s case falter, Judge Komitee intervened—rephrasing the question himself and pressing me to respond. It’s one thing for a judge to seek clarity; it’s another for him to serve as an active participant in the prosecution’s case.
The hidden bias, though, was equally damaging. One critical defense witness—a key OZY investor—traveled from Hong Kong to New York to testify. Despite knowing the witness’s tight schedule, Judge Komitee adjourned early, preventing his testimony. When the witness made a second trip, the judge once again dismissed court early. It took a third international flight for the witness to finally take the stand. This pattern wasn’t just inconvenient—it was a deliberate obstruction of Watson’s right to a fair defense.
But Judge Komitee wasn’t the only conflicted player in the downfall of OZY Media. The spiral began with a series of New York Times articles penned by Ben Smith, who disclosed that he had previously worked at BuzzFeed—an organization that had repeatedly tried to acquire OZY. What Smith failed to mention, however, was that he retained a financial stake in BuzzFeed during his reporting, worth millions of dollars. His reporting, far from neutral, weaponized past professional grudges to devastating effect.
Smith has since left the Times, now launching a new media venture billed as a “global news organization.”, This sounds a lot like what OZY set out to create: nuanced, innovative journalism free from partisan agendas. Maybe Smith’s next step is to ask Judge Komitee for some angel financing—after all, they’ve both already invested in tearing down OZY.
The injustices in Watson’s trial are clear. A judge with deep financial entanglements presided over a trial where his neutrality was essential. A media figure with a vested interest fueled the fire that led to Watson’s indictment. It’s time we demand accountability—from both our judiciary and our media—before more lives and companies are destroyed by those with hidden agendas.
David T. Robinson is the James and Gail Vander Weide Professor of Finance at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is an internationally recognized expert in the fields of private equity, venture capital and entrepreneurial finance. His work has appeared in leading academic journals in finance and economics and has been featured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and The Economist.
