Supreme Court lawyer indicted for tax evasion on poker winnings

A top Supreme Court lawyer who co-founded a popular blog about the Supreme Court was indicted Thursday in Maryland on federal tax evasion charges. He is said to have failed to declare millions of dollars in poker winnings and used his law firm’s money to pay off his gambling debts.

SCOTUS blog editor Tom Goldstein, who is also accused of making false statements to two mortgage lenders, has appeared before the Supreme Court more times than almost any other privately practicing attorney in modern times.

The indictment alleges that Goldstein willfully failed to pay more than $5.3 million in taxes he owed the IRS for tax years 2016 through 2021.

Goldstein, 54, taught at Harvard Law School and was one of several lawyers who represented then-Vice President Al Gore in the Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore, which halted the recount of Florida ballots in the disputed 2000 presidential election. He has also successfully represented Google to the Supreme Court in the case involving his use of oracle Software code in Android has been accused of violating US copyright law.

In November, Goldstein wrote an op-ed for the New York Times calling for the criminal proceedings against President-elect Donald Trump to be dropped.

According to the 22 counts against him, Goldstein was also “an extremely high-stakes power player who frequently played in games or match series in the United States and abroad with stakes in the millions or even tens of millions of dollars.” in U.S. District Court in Maryland.

In a series of games against a foreign player in Asia in 2016, Goldstein won about $13.8 million, according to the indictment. A few months later, Goldstein won $26.4 million in a series of fights against a California businessman in Beverly Hills, the indictment says.

The indictment alleges he diverted legal fees owed to his Bethesda, Maryland, appellate law firm Goldstein & Russell to pay off his poker debts.

The indictment also alleges that “from 2016 to 2022, Goldstein was involved with or had close relationships with at least a dozen women” and paid travel and other expenses for many of them, while also filing “significant amounts of money with the Internal Revenue Service” owed. “

Four of those women were nominally employed by his company and were paid with health benefits while performing “little or no work for the company,” the indictment says.

Goldstein, who co-founded SCOTUSblog with his wife Amy Howe in 2002, told Reuters in early 2023 that he would stop practicing law and retire from his now-renamed law firm.

Goldstein’s attorneys, John Lauro and Christopher Kise of Continental, said in a statement to CNBC: “Mr. Goldstein is a prominent attorney with an impeccable reputation. We are deeply disappointed that the government made these charges in a rush to judgment without fully understanding the important facts.

“Our client intends to vigorously contest these allegations and we expect he will be exonerated in court,” the attorneys said.

Kevin Russell, a lawyer who worked with Goldstein at that previous firm, which also bore Russell’s name, told CNBC: “We have no comment on the charges against Mr. Goldstein.”

Russell said his new firm, Russell & Woofter, is “a different law firm than the firm Goldstein & Russell mentioned in the indictment” and has no connection to Goldstein.

“There is no allegation of wrongdoing against Russell & Woofter LLC or its principals who cooperated with the government’s investigation,” Russell said.

The indictment alleges that in 2016, Goldstein used more than $1.1 million in company funds to pay off personal debts, including gambling debts to poker players.

He also allegedly understated his gambling winnings by more than $3.9 million on his 2016 federal tax return and omitted more than $3.4 million in gambling income on his 2017 tax return.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland, in 2021 Goldstein also allegedly “submitted false mortgage applications to two different mortgage lending companies to obtain financing for the purchase of a $2.6 million home in Washington, DC.”

“On these mortgage applications – which required Goldstein to list all of his liabilities and debts – Goldstein allegedly left out millions of dollars in liabilities, including over $14 million he owed on two promissory notes at the time, as well as taxes he owed to the IRS. ” said the office. “Goldstein’s misrepresentations to one of the mortgage lenders allegedly resulted in his obtaining a $1.98 million loan.”

In an October 2008 Washington Post article about Goldstein’s poker game, he is quoted as saying, “I was one of those people who just caught himself playing poker on ESPN,” and notes that he beat 130 players earlier that year to secure a spot at the World Poker Series in Las Vegas.

“He only lasted two days,” the Post noted. “But during a break in the tournament, the soft-spoken litigator made a name for himself in an 18-hour cash game at the Bellagio: Goldstein started with a $12,000 chip stack and built it to over $100,000, winning hands along the way and lost.” with more than $70,000 in the pot.”

Goldstein is charged with tax evasion, aiding and abetting the preparation of false tax returns, willful failure to pay taxes and providing false information on loan applications.