Tom Goldstein, a top Supreme Court lawyer and co-founder of the news site SCOTUSblog, was indicted over allegations he used his law firm’s money to pay his colossal gambling debts.
Mr. Goldstein was indicted in federal court in Maryland on Thursday. He is best known for his over 40 appearances before the Supreme Court, notably representing former Vice President Al Gore in Bush v. Gore, the case that clinched George W. Bush’s White House victory in 2000.
Mr. Goldstein is charged with 22 counts of tax evasion, aiding and assisting the preparation of false tax returns, willful failure to pay taxes and false statements on loan applications.
The indictment against Mr. Goldstein alleged that he conducted a scheme to “evade the assessment of taxes, file false tax returns and fail to pay his tax obligations when they were due.”
Between 2016 and 2021, Mr. Goldstein avoided $5.3 million in taxes that he owed the Internal Revenue Service, according to the indictment. He allegedly funneled legal fees owed to his Bethesda, Maryland-based law firm, then called Goldstein & Russell before his retirement in 2023, to cover his poker debts.
The indictment in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland portrayed him as an “ultrahigh-stakes” poker player in games “totaling millions, and even tens of millions, of dollars.”
Throughout those years, Mr. Goldstein is alleged to have taken millions of dollars in loans from a pair of California businessmen to put toward his poker playing.
The indictment alleged that Mr. Goldstein downplayed his poker winnings by over $3.9 million on his tax return in 2016 and left out over $3.4 million in gambling winnings on his 2017 tax return.
Mr. Goldenstein is also accused of pursuing intimate relationships with “at least a dozen women,” paying for trips and travel for them while owing large sums of money to the IRS. Four of those women were also hired at his law firm and given health benefits while they “performed little or no work for the firm.”
The indictment pointed out that Mr. Goldstein submitted false mortgage applications to two lending companies to finance over $2.6 million to buy a home in the District of Columbia. He was ultimately rejected on one application but greenlit for $1.98 million on another.
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.