NEW YORK—U.S. prosecutors on Nov. 13 asked a federal judge to strike the opening statement made a day earlier by the lawyer for accused Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman on the first day of his trial in Brooklyn for drug smuggling.
In a letter to U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan, prosecutors said the lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, tried improperly to sway the jury by arguing that Guzman had been selectively targeted for prosecution, an argument the court had barred him from making.
