Detail by Detail, Gupta's Lawyer Deconstructs Goldman Testimony In the battle over the fate of Rajat K. Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs board member on trial on insider trading charges, the line between public and private information is critical. During his second day questioning of Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's chief, Mr. Gupta's defense lawyer Gary Naftalis worked hard to erase that line. Extremely hard. From the beginning, it was a slog. Mr. Naftalis presented two reports from esteemed banking analysts who followed Goldman Sachs. The reports were from the summer of 2008, a period when market turmoil was king and the health of the financial system was in jeopardy. In the reports, authored by analysts at Merrill Lynch and Oppenheimer, the prospect of Goldman Sachs buying a retail bank is raised. Both reports followed meetings with top Goldman officials. "GS bank & trust?" pondered one report. Don't rule it out. The rationale for the putting the reports before the jury was to mitigate damage from a recorded phone call, where Mr. Gupta is heard telling the hedge fund magnate Raj Rajaratnam about the board's private discussions on the very same topic. The prosecutors accused Rajat K. Gupta, a ex-director of Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble, of leaking boardroom secrets about those two companies to Raj Rajaratnam, the convicted money manager. The defense have emphasized that the government had no wiretapped recordings of Mr. Gupta providing secret information. They portray Goldman as a sieve of information. Insider Trading: Multimedia Mr. Naftalis took great pains going over details from the report, alternating between reading choice passages and having Mr. Blankfein read them. After reading a passage about the prospect of Goldman buying a bank, Mr. Naftalis asked the chief executive if he had read the portion correctly. "Yes," replied a smiling Mr. Blankfein, who glanced from the jury to the judge. You read it well. Judge Jed Rakoff, prone to making jokes during trial himself, belted out a laugh, and the courtroom followed. What did he say? Mr. Naftalis asked a co-counsel. Upon hearing of the compliment, he replied "I'll save that piece of the transcript." More often, Mr. Naftalis would find his line of questioning frustrated by Mr. Blankfein's exacting answers and hazy memory or by objections from the other side. A prosecutor, Reed Brodsky, repeatedly took issue with one line of questioning about the analyst reports, prompting a 10-minute sidebar. At one point, Mr. Naftalis questioned Mr. Blankfein regarding a 2008 Wall Street Journal report about looming layoffs at Goldman. Mr. Naftalis asked Mr. Blankfein whether he recalled the article, and that Goldman was poised to layoff 10 percent of its work force. Mr. Blankfein indicated he could not attest to the article's accuracy. Mr. Naftalis persisted, asking again about the article reporting on the layoffs before the company could announce them internally, working to get Mr. Blankfein to verify the content of the article. "I see that's what the article says," snapped Mr. Blankfein. Finally, Mr. Naftalis presented Mr. Blankfein with a transcript of a voicemail the bank chief left for all employees after the news report, which said in part "we regret that many of you learned of this decision from news accounts." Mr. Blankfein eventually conceded to the article's accuracy. Such hard fought battles over relatively modest ground marked the progression of the day;s testimony. As his staff rifled through folders for an exhibit to refresh Mr. Blankfein's memory, Mr. Naftalis began to ask the chief executive about his busy schedule. He noted Mr. Blankfein was exceptionally busy with meetings, often heading from one to the next. That meant he sometimes had to return calls immediately after meetings ended. Mr. Blankfein agreed. "And often, the subject of the call has nothing to do with the meeting?" asked the defense lawyer. "Yes," the chief responded. It was an effort by Mr. Naftalis to drive home one of his defense strategies for the trial. Prosecutors have accused Mr. Gupta of passing insider tips to Mr. Rajaratnam seconds after a Goldman board meeting ended. They have used phone records, but no live recording, and Mr. Rajaratnam's trades as evidence. Defense lawyers have responded by arguing that Mr. Gupta was merely working down his call list that day, and calling Mr. Rajaratnam after the meeting was purely coincidental. Notwithstanding the sometimes numbing testimony, Mr. Naftalis and Mr. Blankfein often seemed to be fighting over the jury's affection as much as anything Friday afternoon. Going through the analyst reports once more, he presented articles to Mr. Blankfein written by news outlets covering the Goldman prospects for purchasing a bank. One article he flashed on the overhead screen featured a photograph of Mr. Blankfein resting his face on his left hand, prompting an eruption of laughter in the courtroom. Mr. Blankfein, seizing on the humor, mimicked the pose from the stand, causing another outburst of laughter from jurors and attendees. Sizing up his pose against the photograph, Mr. Naftalis instructed the chief executive to "move it down and a little to the left."