Goldstein Seeks Acquittal, New Trial on Tax, Loan Fraud Charges

Tom Goldstein, the US Supreme Court advocate and ultra high-stakes poker player convicted of tax and loan-related offenses in late February, is asking the judge who presided over the six-week trial to toss the jury’s verdict.

Goldstein’s motion for acquittal or, in the alternative, a new trial challenges, among other things, the court’s jury instructions on accessory liability and willful blindness. It was filed Monday in the US District Court for the District of Maryland.

The error in the instructions on accessory liability alone requires a retrial on every every count, Goldstein claims. General “charging instructions” failed to advise the jury that aiding and abetting liability required finding another guilty principal; willful conduct by Goldstein; and an affirmative act, not merely an omission, the motion says.

The instructions also failed to advise the jury that finding him guilty for causing “an act that would be an offense if directly performed by him or another” required it to find that Goldstein intended that the substantive offenses be committed.

Further, Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby granted the government’s request to eliminate the accessory instructions detailing aiding and abetting requirements after the parties delivered their closing arguments. It’s a violation of a procedural rule that Goldstein says was “undoubtedly prejudicial” in this case.

Doing so “changed accessory liability from essentially a non-issue in the case to a serious basis on which to convict,” the motion argues. If defense counsel had known the jury would be permitted to find accessory liability without finding that some other principal committed every element of the substantive offense, they would have taken the issue on at closing, the motion said.

Insufficient Evidence, Impermissible Theories

Goldstein also argues the jury was permitted to find him guilty on legally impermissible theories of liability for multiple counts.

For example, he’s innocent as a matter of law on charges that he willfully failed to pay his taxes for tax years 2019, 2020, and 2021 because the government alleged the wrong due dates for the tax payments for each of those years, he says.

Based on a recent decision by the US Court of Federal Claims, the correct due date for all three years was July 10, 2023—after the date on which Goldstein says he paid his taxes in full for those tax years.

Even if Griggsby disagrees with that holding, the convictions are invalid, Goldstein argues.

Because a criminal tax conviction requires the violation of a clear duty, all that matters is that the question is disputed among the courts. Where a court has “squarely considered and rejected the IRS’s position in detail, that clarity is missing as a matter of law,” the motion argues.

Goldstein additionally says key evidence corroborating his testimony at trial was improperly excluded as self-serving hearsay.

The excluded communications—contemporaneous text messages regarding his 2016 gambling activities in Asia that included a ledger of his wins and losses—would have established that he had a good faith belief that he didn’t under-report his gambling winnings for that year, the motion argues.

Goldstein also challenged the sufficiency of the evidence on four counts of assisting in the preparation of false tax returns.

Goldstein was found guilty on one count of tax evasion for failing to report all of his gambling income in 2016, one count each of willful failure to timely pay taxes for four tax years, three counts of making a false statement on a loan application, and four out of eight counts of aiding and assisting in preparation of a false tax return. He was found not guilty on the other four counts.

Goldstein is represented by Munger Tolles & Olson LLP.

The case is United States v. Goldstein, D. Md., No. 8:25-cr-00006, corrected motion filed 3/24/26.