The NY Times reports
Jay Goldberg, a former boxer from Brooklyn who nimbly transmuted punches into punch lines that he wielded as a lawyer to defend celebrity clients including Donald J. Trump, Sean Combs, Willie Nelson, the Rolling Stones and a bevy of mobsters, died on Dec. 5 at his home in Bridgehampton, N.Y. He was 89.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Rema Goldberg..
“Jay was able to take a complex legal situation, greatly simplify it and win, or come to a fair conclusion,” Mr. Trump said in a statement after Mr. Goldberg’s death.
Mr. Goldberg relished his role as a gladiator, first as a 6-foot-2, 140-pound welterweight who retired when a knockout in the third round ended his 10-0 winning streak, and then as a “killer” in the courtroom. He once told the gossip columnist Cindy Adams that he could “rip skin off a body” and cause “physical pain on the stand.”
But as a curbstone comedian who occasionally filled in at the Copacabana nightclub in Manhattan (his aunt knew the owner) and who shared Mark Twain’s faith that a laughing jury seldom convicts, Mr. Goldberg also provoked his share of giggles.
When Matty (the Horse) Iannello, a New York sultan of smut and reputed member of the Genovese crime family, was accused in an extortion case of trying to intimidate one Andrew (the Hulk) Giordano, Mr. Goldberg, in his summation, produced a life-size cardboard cutout of the 6-foot-5, 350-pound Mr. Giordano, who had not been present at the trial, to dramatize to the jury who was in a position to intimidate whom.
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