Mike Scarcella
WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) – Prominent Washington attorney Tom Goldstein will face off against federal prosecutors on Thursday as a jury begins a trial on criminal charges over the veteran U.S. Supreme Court lawyer’s side job as a high-stakes poker player.
Jurors in Greenbelt, Maryland, will hear arguments from Goldstein’s legal team and prosecutors who accuse him of failing to report millions of dollars he won in poker tournaments, lying on loan documents and making improper payments through his law firm, Goldstein & Russell, to fund a lavish lifestyle.
Goldstein, who argued more than 40 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and founded the SCOTUSblog news and analysis website, has pleaded not guilty and twice rejected plea deals offered by the Justice Department.
In pretrial documents, he said “the government singled out some clerical errors and charged them with crimes.”
The trial before U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby is expected to last about four weeks.
The January indictment of Goldstein, who is widely regarded as one of the nation’s top appellate lawyers, shocked the Washington legal community.
A Democrat, Goldstein was part of the team that represented Al Gore in the Supreme Court fight that won George W. Bush the 2000 presidential election. His other clients include Google and Fortnite developer Epic Games. He retired from the law firm in 2023.
Goldstein was charged in the final days of Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration. In a November 2024 op-ed in The New York Times, Goldstein urged prosecutors to drop the criminal case against Trump after he won the election, writing that voters had rendered the “final verdict.”
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)