Hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam's trial defense on Tuesday tried to deflect prosecution evidence that he traded on inside information about Wall Street's most influential bank, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., at the height of the 2008 financial crisis. Former Galleon chief operating officer Rick Schutte testified that well before the government contends Rajaratnam was tipped to a $5 billion investment in Goldman, discussions were already under way about what positions to take in the bank in light of the looming market crisis. Schutte described a lunch on July 31, 2008, with Rajaratnam, Goldman president Gary Cohn and others during his second day of testimony at Rajaratnam's insider trading trial in Manhattan federal court. "Did you hear any discussion of any inside information?" a defense lawyer, Michael Starr, asked Schutte. "No, I do not believe so," replied Schutte, who was a computer hardware analyst at Goldman Sachs for 10 years before joining Galleon in June 2004.