Prosecutor Lashes Out at Silberman Interview : Trial: The accused violated a court order by appearing on TV and claiming his innocence, assistant U.S. attorney says.

The federal judge presiding over Richard T. Silberman’s money-laundering trial said Wednesday that he will consider a prosecutor’s request to sanction the prominent San Diego businessman for saying in a televised interview that he is innocent of all charges.

In a heated exchange, Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles F. Gorder Jr. suggested that Silberman is in contempt of a court order barring certain comments on the case for talking on television. Gorder said he was “shocked” and suggested that he did not know “what more could be done aside from putting Mr. Silberman in jail.”

Defense lawyer James J. Brosnahan replied that a person “in America has the right to say he is not guilty.” It was Draconian to even suggest Silberman should be jailed, Brosnahan said, adding that Gorder was “not entitled to be so high and mighty because we haven’t murdered anybody.”

Irving said he was not about to jail Silberman at this stage but added that he considers the issue serious. The judge said he will have to watch the tape of the interview--conducted by an NBC reporter and broadcast Tuesday on the network’s San Diego affiliate, KNSD (Channel 39)--before deciding what “appropriate action,” if any, to take.

The spat over the interview enlivened what had been a routine hearing Wednesday at which Irving formalized plans to go ahead today with jury selection.

Silberman, 61, who was a top aide to former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., is charged with laundering $300,000 that an undercover FBI agent characterized as the proceeds of Colombian drug trafficking.

His trial is expected to last six weeks. If convicted, Silberman could face up to 75 years in prison.

Since March 1, Silberman, as well as the lawyers in the case, have been operating under a partial gag order. It was imposed by U.S. District Judge Leland C. Nielsen, who said he wanted to restrain talk about the case before trial, particularly after the intense publicity that followed Silberman’s mid-February attempt to kill himself with an overdose of sleeping pills.

The order forbids Silberman and the lawyers on the case from talking about--among other matters--the strength or weakness of either side’s case.

In the television interview, taped April 23 with a national NBC correspondent but not aired until Tuesday, Silberman said that FBI agents and federal prosecutors “made a mistake. They invented something.”

“There’s been no crime committed,” he said. “And I’m innocent, and when the jury hears this story, they’re going to agree.”

Those comments, Gorder said, violated the gag order and meant that Silberman should be found in contempt of court. He urged Irving to impose “some kind of sanction” but did not suggest what it should be.

Brosnahan said he is worried that the news stories likely to follow Gorder’s request might make it impossible to pick an impartial jury. Irving said he and the lawyers will find out today whether that contention has merit.

On Tuesday, the judge told potential jurors not to read newspapers stories or watch television accounts of the case.

Of the 204 potential jurors who filled out a questionnaire when jury selection began Tuesday, 172 had heard of the case, Gorder said. Four of the 172 already had formed an opinion about it, and two others didn’t answer whether they had an opinion, he said.

Irving announced that those six people will be excused but that he wants to proceed with individual questioning of the others in the jury pool.