Goldstein Still Has Cards to Play Even After Guilty Verdict

Prominent lawyer and high-stakes poker player Tom Goldstein was convicted on some, but not all, of the 16 criminal charges against him when his federal trial wrapped up this week. But Goldstein’s legal fight may be far from over.

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Several issues came up during the trial that could be fodder for a successful appeal, according to Bloomberg Law reporter Holly Barker, including a dispute over where Goldstein was physically located when some of these crimes were committed.

Barker covered the trial of the disgraced SCOTUSblog founder and she joins our podcast, On The Merits, to talk about why the jury split its verdict and about how Goldstein’s famous propensity for risk taking influenced his defense strategy.

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This transcript was produced by Bloomberg Law Automation.

David Schultz: Hello, and welcome back to On the Merits, the news podcast from Bloomberg Law. I’m your host, David Schultz.

Well, the Tom Goldstein verdict is in, and it’s guilty. And not guilty. The famous Supreme Court lawyer who founded SCOTUSblog before a spectacular gambling-related fall from grace is now a convicted felon, but the jury in Goldstein’s trial only convicted him on 12 of the 16 charges he faced.

As we talked about at the start of this trial, all of the legal troubles stem from Goldstein’s ultra-high-stakes case, and all of the legal troubles stem from Goldstein’s ultra-high-stakes poker habit, which led him to, shall we say, get creative on his tax returns and loan applications.

Today we’re gonna be talking about this with Bloomberg Law reporter Holly, who’s been covering the entire trial for us, gavel to gavel.

In a bit, we’re gonna get into all the issues that may come up if, or rather when, Goldstein appeals his conviction, but first I asked Holly to explain to me how, and more importantly, why the jury split the way it did.

Holly Barker:

So it was a mixed verdict, and a mixed verdict isn’t in and of itself unexpected. What’s a little confusing to me is how they split. They concluded that Goldstein assisted in the preparation of a false tax return for his firm on an IRS Form 1120S, but found him not guilty of assisting in the preparation of his personal tax return on an IRS Form 1040.

The reason that’s confusing is that income from the 1120S feeds into line items on the Form 1040, meaning they’re interrelated. So the jurors may have had a principled reason for divergent verdicts on those counts. It’s just not apparent to me what it was.

The other two not guilty verdicts were for tax returns, personal and for the firm, that were filed in 2018. Those charges involved allegations that Goldstein mischaracterized income from a person identified as foreign gambler three in the indictment and allegedly redirected legal fees that should have been reported as income, but weren’t. I have no idea, again, why they rejected those charges and not others.

David Schultz:

Tell me about the scene in the courtroom. Whenever there’s a trial and a verdict that’s read, I always love hearing about sort of what the moment is like when the defendant hears the verdict. What was that like? How did Goldstein react and how did the other folks in the courtroom react?

Holly Barker:

It was solemn and quiet. There was no sort of effusive reactions. I noticed the jurors when they came in were sort of avoiding looking directly at Goldstein and there wasn’t much of a reaction from the courtroom at all. Judge Griggsby wouldn’t have allowed it in any event. Goldstein’s parents were there, but beyond that, it was mostly professionals like media and government folks in the room, so you weren’t gonna get a lot of reactions sort of from the gallery.

David Schultz:

That makes sense. Okay, when we spoke at the beginning of this trial, one of the key themes that we talked about was how difficult it would be for the prosecutors to prove this case. It seems like, at least partially, they succeeded. How did they overcome these big hurdles to be able to prove that Goldstein committed tax crimes here?

Holly Barker:

So it’s pretty clear the government persuaded jurors that Goldstein was dishonest and that the system he’d established for communicating with his accountants and getting his tax returns prepared was flawed by design. That was sort of their theory is like, this was all on purpose, this sort of sloppiness.

From my perspective, he did a really good job when he took the stand, but he opened himself up to cross-examination that the prosecution used to highlight a pattern of dishonesty. When Goldstein sat with an interview with Jeffrey Toobin that ran in New York Times Magazine at the end of 2025, he told him that this case was gonna come down to whether the jury decided he was a good guy or a bad guy, and it seems like they decided he was a bad guy or at least not a credible one.

The lead prosecutor on the case told jurors in closing that if this case was gonna turn on credibility, there was no reason to believe Tom Goldstein, and it worked.

David Schultz:

So making this a sort of vibes case, as you talked about, was a big risk for Goldstein that it sounds like it didn’t really pay off.

Holly Barker:

Not at this moment, yeah.

David Schultz

Let’s talk about the appeal potential though, because it sounds like there’s a ton of grist for a possible appeal, and it’s also worth mentioning that Goldstein himself is one of the most prominent appellate attorneys in the country. Specifically, I wanna ask you about this venue issue and how that could play into an appeal. Can you explain the venue thing that Goldstein brought up and how this may play out moving forward?

Holly Barker:

So venue refers to where a case is brought, and in the context of making a false statement on a loan application, venue’s appropriate where the communication was transmitted. Goldstein faced three charges, and he basically said, look, I was absolutely out of the country, I have travel documents that can prove it, when one of these loan applications was transferred.

David Schultz:

So let’s linger on that for a second, because I think this is really important. So what Goldstein is arguing here is that prosecutors can’t prove that he was actually in the state that they say he was when he filed this loan application. Am I getting that right?

Holly Barker:

That’s right. And the government, they offered IP addresses showing that the applications were transmitted from his home and they have a title guy who said, the closure happened, when they closed on the house, it happened in Maryland. So the government had some evidence, but Goldstein said, look, in one of these instances, you have the IP address placing me at home when we all know I was in the US Virgin Islands.

So that must cast some doubt on whether or not the IP addresses are a good indicator of sort of where the offense occurred. And he also pointed out that, yes, this title guy said he remembered the closing being in Maryland, but the signature line on the form said that they were signed in DC. So he poked holes in sort of the evidence for venue.

And I think the rub is going to be the instructions.

David Schultz:

To the jury.

Holly Barker:

Correct, yeah. And whether or not, because the jury found what it found with respect to venue. And I should add that, unlike other elements in a criminal offense, venue only needs to be approved by a preponderance of the evidence. So the bar is much lower than it is for other elements. But if the instructions were bad, this seems like an area that is ripe for challenge. And it’s come up before and not all that long ago and before the same judge. So, and granted the circumstances were different, but sort of the principles and the gist of it is the same.

David Schultz:

I’m glad you brought that up because yeah, like there was another case before the same judge and with the same prosecutors where this venue issue came up again. And in that case, the defendant won an appeal as a result of this, right?

Holly Barker:

That’s right. So it was a former Baltimore State’s attorney, Marilyn Mosby, won an appeal to vacate a conviction for making a false statement on a loan application after the appeals court said the jury had been improperly instructed.

David Schultz:

So let’s get into what’s happening right now. The prosecutors initially asked that Goldstein be thrown in jail while he awaits sentencing. And then I guess backed off on that. What’s happening there? This sounds really confusing.

Holly Barker:

That’s right. So in the morning on Thursday, jurors had been called back to decide on this like lingering forfeiture issue, which we can talk about in a minute if you want. That morning, the prosecution stood up in front of the judge and said, by the way, judge later this afternoon, we’re going to seek detention today. And Judge Grigsby said, we’re going to talk about that later because she had other things on our calendar.

So we convene at four. And at that point, the prosecution conferred and said, nevermind, we’re not going to seek detention. Instead, we’re going to seek additional conditions of release. And the reason that they wanted additional conditions of release is because Goldstein has been deemed a flight risk. That’s why they had conditions in the first place and took his passport. He’s traveled internationally a lot. He’s got friends in high places abroad. And now that he’s been convicted and he’s facing prison time, his incentive to flee is arguably much higher. So, you know, it makes sense that they would have an increased concern about flight risk.

I was a little surprised that they asked for detention. I mean, I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable, but it struck me as pretty aggressive. And at the end of the day, I doubt Judge Grigsby would have gone for it because, you know, she decided that his wife serving as custodian for him, like his person, his family home has been posted as bond. His movement is seriously restricted and pretrial services can monitor him. And so she’s satisfied that that’s enough to ensure he shows up for his next court date.

David Schultz:

Okay, one last thing. Let’s get to that forfeiture issue. This was really strange, at least I thought it was really strange. So the jury decided whether or not Tom Goldstein will have to forfeit his house. And he apparently asked the jury to do this. What was happening here? Can you explain this?

Holly Barker:

Sure, so Goldstein had asked to have the jury decide this forfeiture count and whether or not the house constituted proceeds of an offense of which he was convicted such that it was forfeitable. Then on Thursday morning, they said, listen, we don’t need to have the jury decide it if we can reach an agreement with the government that protects Amy Howe, Goldstein’s wife’s interest. He said that was his sole concern. He just wanted to protect her interest.

The government was like, we need some time to think about this and we wanna go ahead and let it go to the jury. Like this is, like it’s not okay for him to want it to go to the jury and then change his mind, whatever. So it goes to the jury, which wound up working out well for him because they found in his favor.

David Schultz:

Okay, let me just make sure I understand though the forfeiture issue, because that seems like a lot of things happen in a very short amount of time. So he wanted the jury to decide whether he would have to forfeit his house, Goldstein. Then he, at the last minute decided, no, I don’t wanna do that. But the prosecutors said, no, we can’t change your mind at the last minute. Yes, we are gonna do this. And then the jury decided and they decided in Goldstein’s favor.

Holly Barker:

Correct, yeah. And the question they were deciding was whether there was a sufficient, the legal terms nexus between the offense and the property. And they said no. So it worked out well for him, or for Amy Howe, I should say.

David Schultz:

The reason I am sort of focused on that is that it seems like this is an overarching theme in the trial and maybe even Goldstein’s entire life is that his willingness to take enormous risks that other people might balk at. And I’m thinking of him testifying on his own behalf, him asking the jury to decide this forfeiture issue. Would you agree with that? That this is kind of one in a long line of a pattern that he’s shown where he’s all about just sort of risking it all.

Holly Barker:

Yeah, look, this is a guy who has always bet on himself. And that has served him really well. So it’s not surprising to me at all that he fought the case the way that he’s fought it, or that he felt compelled to take the stand, or that he was confident enough to do it. I do think that is sort of, I think that he has a constitution many other people and a tolerance for risk that most people simply don’t. And I think that is definitely manifested in the way that it’s been litigated.

David Schultz:

So fascinating. Holly, thank you so much for joining us again after a pretty wild week for you. Holly talking with us about the Tom Goldstein verdict. Thanks.

Holly Barker:

Thank you so much for having me.

David Schultz:

And that’ll do it for today’s episode of On The Merits. For more updates, visit our website at news.bloomberglaw.com. Once again, that’s news.bloomberglaw.com.

The podcast today was produced by myself, David Schultz. Our editors were Chris Opfer and Alessandra Rafferty. And our executive producer is Josh Block. Thanks everyone for listening. See you next time.