As a criminal-defense lawyer, you've represented a notorious roster of clients. You'll take pretty much anyone except for mobsters.
I wouldn't say I'd take any client. If I had a client I believed were guilty of pedophilia, for instance, it's just not the right case for me. It doesn't mean that person is not entitled to representation. That being said, I don't take organized-crime cases. My parents were Italian immigrants, and my dad's parents had run-ins with organized crime in Red Hook.
Wasn't your first legal job transcribing the Gotti trial?
Yes, I worked for lawyers involved in the Gotti trial, and I got hired to do the transcription of these tapes. That was my first foray into the criminal arena.
Now you represent Alex Rodriguez in his dispute with Major League Baseball over his suspected use of performance-enhancing drugs. As a Yankees fan, what did you think of him before you represented him?
Just reading the papers, it was pretty easy to get a pretty unfavorable impression.
What do you think of him now?
He's very easy to talk to, very intelligent and also very — I don't know if the right word is "humble," but maybe "humble" is the right word. My first impression was: My god, this guy's getting such a bum rap.
But you're obviously going to say Rodriguez is a good guy.
If I didn't think so, I would skirt that question skillfully. I can tap dance pretty well.
You were a Yankees fan growing up.
The first time my dad took me out to Yankee Stadium was the George Brett pine-tar-incident game.
Is it possible to be a die-hard Yankees fan and call the Yankees' G.M. Brian Cashman and the Yankees' president Randy Levine thugs?
I didn't characterize them as thugs. I said it was a thuglike culture. I'm not rooting for the front office. I'm rooting for the pinstripes.
During a "Today" show interview, Matt Lauer produced a release letter from Major League Baseball that would've allowed you to make Rodriguez's medical records public. On air, you refused to sign it.
A little surprising because it was the "Today" show. Had I agreed to go on Jerry Springer, I would have said, "O.K., fair." Two high-ranking members of the "Today" show staff called me after to say they were very surprised and disappointed by that.
Were they apologetic?
Very much so. It was a cheap P.R. stunt by Major League Baseball.
I read an article in The New York Post that said you might be the most hated lawyer in New York City. The headline was "The Devils' Advocate."
When you reach a certain level of either success or notoriety, people take shots at you. It was actually a flattering article. It came out after I won the rape-cops case — it was about how I win cases that people say I can't win.
You have a T-shirt suggesting that David Ortiz used performance-enhancing drugs.
Instead of saying "Big Papi," it says, "Big PEDi."
You grew up in Sheepshead Bay, and yet you went to Yeshiva of Flatbush for elementary school.
My mother and father quickly determined that the best education I was going to get as a young child was at Yeshiva, instead of getting beat up at P.S. 12. I still have my yarmulke.
You played hockey at Skidmore College and had 355 penalty minutes in one year — not what you would expect from a Yeshiva guy.
I hold that record, but I was not just an enforcer. Our team was so small, so I took the role of a protector — sort of what I do now, right?
Were most of those penalty minutes fight-related?
I didn't get a lot of two-minute tripping penalties.
When was the last time you actually were in a real fight?
I'm going to decline to answer that.
You've said that you're still very much a street kid from Sheepshead Bay, but you live in Connecticut now and own a 49-foot yacht.
It's a boat, it's not a yacht.
INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED.
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