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U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo, who took over the case last summer, ordered separate trials Wednesday for Peter Gerace Jr., owner of Pharaoh’s Gentlemen’s Club, and retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent Joseph Bongiovanni.

Vilardo said “justice now requires severance of Bongiovanni’s case so that it may proceed expeditiously.”

His ruling comes eight months after U.S. District Judge John L. Sinatra Jr., who previously presided over the case, ordered a joint trial.

Gerace is awaiting trial on charges of bribing the DEA agent, drug trafficking, sex trafficking and witness tampering. Gerace’s charges include maintaining Pharaoh’s as a drug-involved premises where vulnerable young women were exploited through their drug addictions and coerced into engaging in commercial sex acts. Bongiovanni is awaiting trial on charges of accepting more than $250,000 in bribes from Gerace and other drug dealers who he thought were associated with organized crime. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Federal prosecutors in November moved to disqualify one of Gerace’s lawyers, delaying the Jan. 8 trial date that had been set for the two. Lawyers for Bongiovanni, who was indicted in 2019, did not want to wait months longer as prosecutors and Gerace’s lawyers wrangle over Gerace’s legal representation or for a potential replacement lawyer to come up to speed preparing for trial.

Prosecutors did not oppose Bongiovanni’s request for a new trial, and neither did Gerace.

But Gerace requested a different type of severance. Rather than separate trials for the defendants, Gerace sought to sever the counts. He proposed the first trial cover all of the counts against Bongiovanni, and also the counts on which he and Bongiovanni overlap.

Gerace proposed a second trial just for the remaining charges against him.

Vilardo declined that request.

“Severing some of the counts against Gerace would complicate – rather than streamline – this complex case,” Vilardo said in his order.

The judge scheduled the trial for Bongiovanni to start Feb. 12. Vilardo said he will schedule the trial for Gerace after deciding the U.S. Attorney’s Office motion to disqualify attorney Eric Soehnlein from representing Gerace.

Seeking lawyer’s removal

Prosecutors on Nov. 21 filed a document asking that Soehnlein be removed as one of Gerace’s two defense lawyers. The document plus related documents are sealed from public view, and the reasons for seeking his removal have not been aired in open court proceedings. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tripi said in court last month that information was uncovered that led to another investigation that caused a “conflict” for Soehnlein.

The government motion to remove Soehnlein triggered the delay that ultimately led to Vilardo ordering separate trials.

Lawyers involved in the case have declined to comment about it, citing the sealed nature of the motion.

In a filing last week, Gerace co-counsel Mark Foti said the government’s motion to disqualify Soehnlein “has left the Gerace trial team in disarray and unable to prepare or proceed with the trial on all of the pending charges against Gerace.”

When the government filed its first document in November, Foti defended his co-counsel.

“He, as the court knows, has a reputation in this community that I think is well-earned and well-deserved,” Foti said at a court hearing. “He is an attorney of integrity.”

Lawyers not involved in the Gerace case have taken note of the situation Soehnlein finds himself in.

“Eric is a rising star. I don’t know many prosecutors who want to go up against him,” said attorney Cheryl Meyers Buth. “Getting him off the case gives the government an advantage – simple as that.

“The court documents are sealed but the tactics are pretty transparent,” she added. “Granted, not all lawyers have great reputations, but they are clearly going after the wrong guy here. I’ve worked on cases with Eric and can tell you he sets a high bar with his academic and ethical standards. If this defendant was as bad as they claim, then the government should try its case instead of bringing these other issues up now and causing more delay. The public is smart enough to see through all of the subterfuge.”

‘Spillover prejudice’

Since taking on the case after Sinatra recused himself, Vilardo has said he will not reconsider Sinatra’s previous rulings unless a development or new information requires him to do so for fairness.

Bongiovanni previously moved for severance in April and again in August, but both of those requests were denied.

In May, Sinatra decided on one joint trial after both defendants sought separate trials.

At the time, Bongiovanni’s previous lawyer feared the former federal agent accused of protecting drug dealers with ties to organized crime would not get a fair trial if he had to stand trial together with a strip club owner facing a sex-trafficking count. And a previous lawyer for the strip club owner worried Gerace wouldn’t get a fair trial if jurors heard about the former agent’s alleged ties to organized crime.

The indictment against Bongiovanni and Gerace makes clear the two are alleged to have participated in a common scheme, Sinatra said at the time, with federal prosecutors alleging concrete examples of direct interactions between the two to further their conspiracies to defraud the United States and also distribute controlled substances, Sinatra said in his May ruling.

The two men are both named in two counts in the indictment: conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to distribute controlled substances.

Gerace faces eight other counts: paying a bribe to a public official; maintaining a drug-involved premises; and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and possession with intent to distribute cocaine. He also faces a four-count indictment filed in March alleging witness tampering and cocaine charges.

Bongiovanni faces 13 other counts, including seven counts of obstruction of justice; two counts of false statements to a U.S. agency; two counts of a public official accepting a bribe; and two other conspiracy counts.

In arguing to sever the trial by counts rather than defendants, Foti last week said resolving the Bongiovanni-related counts against Gerace in a first trial would narrow the scope of evidence that would be presented at the second trial. And at a second trial, Gerace “would be shielded from some of the spillover prejudice that will undoubtedly result from the evidence that the government intends to present against Bongiovanni, including the evidence regarding Italian organized crime.”