Supreme Court lawyer charged with tax evasion on poker winnings

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

SCOTUSblog publisher Tom Goldstein, who is also charged with making false statements to two mortgage lenders, has appeared before the Supreme Court more times than nearly any other attorney in private practice in modern times.

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

Goldstein, 54, has taught at Harvard Law School and was one of several lawyers who represented then-Vice President Al Gore in the Bush v. Gore case at the Supreme Court, which ceased the recounting of Florida ballots in the disputed 2000 presidential election. He has also successfully represented Google at the Supreme Court in the case where its use of Oracle software code in Android was accused of violating U.S. copyright law.

In November, Goldstein authored a New York Times guest essay that called for the end of criminal cases against President-elect Donald Trump.

Goldstein also has been “an ultrahigh-stakes power player, frequently playing in matches or series of matches in the United States and abroad involving stakes totaling millions, and even tens of millions, of dollars,” according to the 22-count indictment against him in U.S. District Court in Maryland.

In a series of matches against a foreign gambler in Asia in 2016, the indictment says, Goldstein won about $13.8 million. Several months later, in a series of matches against a California businessman in Beverly Hills, Goldstein won $26.4 million, according to the indictment.

The indictment says he diverted legal fees owed to his Bethesda, Maryland, law firm, Goldstein & Russell, which specialized in appellate litigation, to pay his poker-related debts.

The indictment also alleges that from 2016 through 2022, “Goldstein was involved in or pursued intimate relationships with at least a dozen women,” and paid travel and other expenses for many of them while owing “substantial amounts of money to the Internal Revenue Service.”

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

Goldstein, who co-founded SCOTUSblog with his wife, Amy Howe, in 2002, told the Reuters news service in early 2023 that he was ending his legal practice and retiring from his firm, which has since been renamed.

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

“Our client intends to vigorously contest these charges and we expect he will be exonerated at trial,” the attorneys said. 

The indictment says Goldstein used more than $1.1 million in firm funds to pay personal debts in 2016, 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 tax return for 2017.

Goldstein also allegedly “submitted false mortgage applications to two separate mortgage lending companies, seeking financing to purchase a $2.6 million home in Washington, D.C.” in 2021, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland.

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

An October 2008 Washington Post article about Goldstein’s poker playing quotes him as saying, “I was one of those people who just got caught up watching poker on ESPN,” and notes that he beat 130 players earlier that year to earn a seat at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.

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

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