Goldstein Grilled on Past Lies, Accused of Playing the Victim

High-profile US Supreme Court advocate Tom Goldstein, who again took the stand in his own defense on tax and false statement charges, faced cross-examination Thursday on his history of deceiving people.

He acknowledged lying to his wife about his gambling; to lawyer Paul Napoli, who had invested in Goldstein’s poker matches against billionaire Bob Safai, about winning; and to billionaireStewart Resnick, at least in the beginning, about how he intended to use his $10 million line of credit.

Goldstein also acknowledged that he deceived billionaire Alec Gores about who professional gambler Keith Gipson was when he brought him to their 2016 poker games, where Goldstein won around $26 million. Gores—who testified in the case-had told Goldstein he didn’t want him to bring a professional poker player to their heads-up matches. Goldstein responded by saying he “may have understated” Gipson’s experience.

The prosecution also had an opportunity to tell jurors Goldstein was a philanderer.

“Mr. Goldstein, you did not tell your wife that you were having many, many, affairs, right?” prosecutor Sean Beaty asked him.

Goldstein declined to answer, saying that doing so would require him to tell the court about conversations he had with his wife, seemingly invoking martial privilege.

Beaty moved on. The court previously largely excluded evidence about Goldstein’s alleged paramours.

Beaty also walked through Goldstein’s frivolous spending: a $225,000 Bentley and a $190,000 apartment in Hollywood in 2017; a house in Rosa Beach, Calif., for two months for $70,000 and a $17,000 trip to Bali in 2018; and lots of expensive visits to a popular New York City nightclub. The list went on.

“You still think you’re the victim here, right?” Beaty asked.

“Still?” Goldstein asked. “No, I don’t think I am the victim here.”

Goldstein later told the jury that spending money on something else when he had outstanding tax debt was “stupid, but not a crime.”

“It’s obviously humiliating now,” he said.

Venue Defense Debuts

Goldstein admitted to deceiving mortgage lenders on his first day on the stand, but established what could be a strong defense to some, if not all, of the false statement on a loan application charges by pointing out that the government hadn’t shown he committed relevant acts in Maryland.

“Venue matters for charges like this,” Goldstein told the jury.

The prosecution immediately objected, and the defense moved on, but not before Goldstein had told jurors that he signed at least two of the three applications while outside of Maryland.

For the third, he said he was in the “DMV,” referring to the Washington, Maryland, and Virginia region. “But I don’t know exactly where,” he said. “I mean, it’s at that moment in time—I don’t think anyone does.”

Former Baltimore state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby raised the same venue argument in her trial on mortgage fraud charges and got her conviction on the charges undone after the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit decided the trial court gave the jury bad venue instructions. Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby presided over that trial and is presiding here.

In Mosby’s case, jurors were told, incorrectly, that the government didn’t have to prove that the crime itself was committed in Maryland to find that the US DIstrict Court of the District of Maryland was the proper venue. Telling the jury that it could establish venue by finding that an element of the crime was committed in Maryland would have been permissible, the Fourth Circuit said.

Here, the government showed the jury the IP addresses associated with the e-signatures on the loans, indicating Goldstein was at home. But Goldstein said the IP addresses aren’t reliable because they also show he was in Maryland when travel records show he was in the US Virgin Islands.

Goldstein is charged with one count of tax evasion, eight counts of aiding and abetting in the preparation of false and fraudulent tax returns, four counts of willful failure to pay taxes, and three counts of making a false statement on a loan application.

Munger Tolles & Olson represents Goldstein.

The case is United States v. Goldstein, D. Md., No. 8:25-cr-00006, 2/12/26.