Ex-Law Partner, Real Estate Mogul Testify in Goldstein Trial (1)

Kevin Russell of Goldstein & Russell and real estate mogul and high-stakes gambler Bob Safai testified for the government Tuesday in the trial of former US Supreme Court advocate Tom Goldstein.

Jurors learned from Russell that Goldstein “wasn’t particularly diligent about running the business,” and heard from Safai that Goldstein was struggling to pay significant poker debts in 2017 and 2018.

Russell said, for example, that the reason G&R relocated from Friendship Heights to Bethesda, Md., was because Goldstein forgot to renew the firm’s lease.

If jurors believe that, it doesn’t particularly help the government’s case. It arguably supports Goldstein’s claim that he counted on his accounting firm to correctly handle his taxes and simply made mistakes.

Russell also acknowledged Goldstein’s intellect and legal acumen, but on cross-examination, said he would say the same nice things about lots of other appellate practitioners in the Washington, DC, legal community.

Goldstein wasn’t a tax specialist and hadn’t worked on any appeals involving the tax rules around reporting gambling winnings, he testified.

The government also asked Russell whether he was aware of G&R or Goldstein “borrowing” funds from Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowed LLP and Napoli Shkolnik PLLC, two law firms G&R had worked with on appeals.

He said he wasn’t.

Neither firm immediately responded to Bloomberg Law’s request for comment on the questioning.

Money Trouble

Safai—who said he’d played poker with “titans of industry” and famous actors including Ben Affleck, Kevin Hart, and Tobey Maguire—described Goldstein’s poker playing as “aggressive” and “erratic at times.”

But they were a good match, he said. Safai said his own playing style was “exactly the same.”

Goldstein won a few games, but Safai said he “won more.”

The real estate magnate told jurors that after he won $6 million from Goldstein in a two-day poker match over Labor Day 2017, he had a difficult time collecting the debt.

It was bad enough that he eventually asked Goldstein to sign a promissory note calling for a $30,000 monthly payment to cover principal and interest, he said. It was the first time he’d had to do something like that to secure a debt.

When Goldstein had only paid down $3 million, Safai sold the note to Eddie Ting, a mutual friend of theirs.

The uncollected gambling debt was bad luck, Safai said, like “a black cat” he needed to get off his back, so that he’d stop losing.

“I’m very superstitious,” he said.

Safai also testified that some of the payments he received from Goldstein had been made by third parties on Goldstein’s behalf, including a $500,000 payment from Maguire.

Prosecutors allege the money represented income to Goldstein’s firm for legal services and claim he avoided reporting it by having the fee sent directly to Safai to satisfy his gambling debt.

Molly Runkle, one of G&R’s former office managers, testified how she would go about gathering documents for Goldstein’s outside accountants, among other things. It appeared intended to show how little she knew about Goldstein’s gambling, such that she wouldn’t have had the information necessary to tell the accountants about it.

She said she “had a sense” that Goldstein played poker but didn’t know for how much.

She denied ever having seen a Form 1099 for the $26 million Alec Gores said he paid Goldstein after the lawyer beat him in a heads-up poker match in 2016.

She said she’d remember if he’d told her he’d won or lost millions playing poker.

The defense will continue cross-examining her on Wednesday morning.

Goldstein is represented by Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP.

The case is United States v. Goldstein, D. Md., No. 8:25-cr-00006, trial 1/20/26.