ALBANY (AP) -- The judge presiding at former New York Senate leader Joseph Bruno's corruption trial Thursday harshly scolded Bruno and warned him not to question any more of his rulings in front of the jury.

"For once in your life you don't control something," U.S. District Judge Gary Sharpe told the Rensselaer County Republican at the close of the trial's eighth day.

The judge's rebuke came after Bruno had turned to his attorney to question why Sharpe let a prosecutor ask an additional question of the day's last witness after taking pains to make sure the defense attorney was brief so the jurors could go home for the day. The judge then dismissed the jury and the witness.

"If you ever question any of my rulings again ... I will take measures," Sharpe said. He didn't say what those would be. He asked if Bruno understood.

Bruno, 80, who for more than a decade was one of the most powerful figures in New York government, stood stiffly at the defense table. He said, "I understand that very clearly, judge." Before Bruno said anything else, defense attorney Abbe David Lowell also said they did.

"If we have a repeat of what I just saw and heard, we will have real difficulties," said Sharpe, a former federal prosecutor. Before the trial, Sharpe had warned Bruno's lawyers about talking to reporters about the case and issues with the law used to prosecute him. The judge emphasized that he is the only one in his court who decides what the law is.

Defense lawyers and the prosecutors declined to comment about Thursday's exchange. While the attorneys generally have stopped talking to reporters, Bruno has continued. Earlier Thursday on the courthouse steps he repeated that the law in question is "vague" and the subject of challenges before the U.S. Supreme Court.

"We obeyed every law that we were aware of in New York state," Bruno said. He said again that he simply worked on the side as a businessman, which is his right, and he never took a bribe or pressured anybody to do business with him.

Bruno faces eight fraud charges, accused of using his office to enrich himself by $3.2 million while running the Senate and depriving New Yorkers of his honest services.

In testimony Thursday, Wright Investors Service Senior Vice President Kenneth Singer said Bruno helped him contact several unions so the company could make sales presentations to manage their multimillion-dollar pension funds. The company successfully bid and managed many of them and paid Bruno commissions for four years and later as a part-time employee.

Singer acknowledged that Bruno once arranged a meeting for him with Edward Bartholomew, the assistant Senate counsel who handled labor issues, to see if the lawyer could help him contact several union locals to pursue fund business.

Bartholomew testified earlier in the trial that the aggressive salesman's request made him uncomfortable, and he forwarded it to his boss, the chief Senate counsel, and that was the end of it.

Singer testified that he was at Bruno's Capitol office two or three times when the Senate leader called union officials about the investment businesses. He said Bruno told them he had a connection with or worked for Wrigh t, that Singer would follow up with a call, but they were under "no obligation" to meet Singer to hear his pitch.

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