Tom Girardi on the Witness Stand: ‘I Wasn’t Going to ‘Go Steal Money’’

In a stunning move, the once-influential, now-disgraced former attorney Tom Girardi took the witness stand Thursday to testify in his own defense, flatly asserting that he never intentionally misled clients and that “every client got every penny that every client was supposed to get.”

It marked the first time Girardi, 85, has spoken publicly about the allegations of large-scale fraud at his now-closed law firm, Girardi Keese, and about charges that he misappropriated millions of dollars in settlement funds that belonged to his clients.

The law firm imploded in late 2020 amid evidence that he stole settlements from widows and orphans in an Indonesian plane crash, and hundreds of former clients and vendors came forward saying they were collectively cheated out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Legal experts said that having a defendant like Girardi on the witness stand is fraught with risk and is often a last-ditch effort to humanize their client or gain sympathy from jurors. Michael Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor and now a chair of white collar defense at the law firm Cole Schotz, said Girardi’s testimony could undercut the defense’s argument that their client has long suffered from dementia.

“If he mumbles, and forgets and acts as though he’s living in some parallel universe, the defense benefits,” Weinstein said. “Conversely, if the government is able to draw out that he is aware, in whole or part of his actions, and made coherent decisions, and is aware of his surroundings, his testimony will support government efforts to hold him accountable.”

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