“Lawyer for accused drug trafficking boxer Goran Gogic challenges bid to throw him off the case” —

• “Joseph Corozzo Jr., the lawyer for boxer Goran Gogic, says he shouldn’t be spiked from the pugilist’s drug trafficking case based on ‘baseless’ jury tampering and witness intimidation allegations — arguing that the feds have been trying to get him since the 1990s.”
• “Corozzo Jr. — son of the late reputed Gambino crime family consigliere Joseph (Jo Jo) Corozzo — laid out his argument in a court filing Friday, two weeks after federal prosecutors called him a ‘subject’ of a criminal investigation and moved to have his firm disqualified from Gogic’s case.”
• “Corozzo’s co-counsel Angela Lipsman pushed back in a letter to Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Joan Azrack Friday.”
• “‘If being the subject of a criminal investigation barred Mr. Corozzo from representing defendants, his decades-long legal career would have been stunted in its infancy as the FBI’s fruitless attempts to find evidence of him engaging in racketeering date all the way back to the 1990s, when [law firm] Rubinstein & Corozzo was only a few years old,’ she wrote, in a letter co-signed by Corozzo.”
• “Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have repeatedly sought to prevent Corozzo from representing mob defendants over the decades.”
• “Prosecutors in 2005 tried to spike Corozzo from the murder and racketeering trial of Gambino captain Dominick Pizzonia, citing his status as Gambino ‘house counsel,’ his loyalty to his father and his uncle, Nicholas ‘Nicky’ Corozzo, and contending he was a subject in two separate criminal probes.”
• “The feds contended in court filings that Corozzo was once proposed for induction into the Gambino crime family in 2000, but then-Bonanno family boss Joseph Massino, who famously turned cooperator, ‘withheld his approval on the grounds that he believed attorneys should not be permitted to become full-time members of La Cosa Nostra.'”
  Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Jack Weinstein kept him on the case.”
• “The government managed to get Brooklyn Federal Judge John Gleeson to agree to block Corozzo from representing reputed Gambino soldier Gaetano Napoli Sr. at trial in a 2010 fraud case, after the lawyer faced a witness-tampering probe. Napoli pleaded guilty before the case went to trial, though.”
• “‘Neither the FBI’s prior investigation of Mr. Corozzo for racketeering nor the alleged ongoing investigation for obstruction of justice is going to impair our zealous advocacy of Mr. Gogic in any way,’ Lipsman wrote.”
• “Gogic’s trial was cast into disarray in November, when the FBI uncovered an alleged plot to bribe a juror with $100,000 the weekend before opening statements.”
• “After a probe, the feds said they found protected legal documents, including a photo of a witness’s daughter, in Gogic’s cell in the MDC Brooklyn jail, and detailed instances of apparent witness intimidation in the runup to the trial, according to court filings.”
• “The defense team contended that it didn’t intentionally leave any protected documents with Gogic, though some pages might have inadvertently been mixed in with the reams of nonprotected documents the law firm brought during jail visits.”
• “Gogic faces charges he played a key role in an operation that trafficked more than 20 tons of cocaine through U.S. ports.”

“Ex-MSG Worker Says DQ Attempt Is ‘Clear Misdirection’” —

• “A former employee pursuing wrongful firing claims against Madison Square Garden Entertainment has asked a New York federal judge to reject the company’s request to remove his counsel based on his potential need to testify, arguing that key facts are available from other sources and his lawyer will not need to take the stand.”
• “In an opposition brief filed Friday, Donald Ingrasselino said MSG’s attempt to boot his attorney Ethan M. Krasnoo and his firm Reavis Page Jump LLP from the suit was ‘a clear misdirection of the court’s energy and resources from the real disputes at play.'”
• “Even if there were grounds to disqualify Krasnoo, doing so would cause substantial hardship for Ingrasselino, he further argued, because MSG’s reputation made it difficult to find any lawyer willing to represent him.”
• “Of five lawyers he contacted, four declined to take the case ‘because of defendants’ reputation in litigation and their lawyer ban imposed on lawyers at firms that sue MSG from attending their venues (through exclusion by use of facial recognition software),’ he said.”
• “Ingrasselino sued MSG and Chief Security Officer John Eversole in September. In the complaint, he said he was hired as senior director of security for Tao Group, which was owned by MSG, in 2021, and he was fired in 2024 after allegedly enduring hostile working conditions, discrimination based on his age and disability, and retaliation.”
• “Ingrasselino is now fighting a motion to disqualify filed in November alongside a motion to dismiss. According to the defendants, Krasnoo’s testimony is integral to the majority of Ingrasselino’s claims, as Krasnoo communicated directly with the company after Ingrasselino was fired, particularly over the disputed mediation agreement.”
• “MSG called the suit a ‘desperate’ attempt to get media attention, arguing the claims should be thrown out. It denied Ingrasselino’s allegations, saying he was fired for breaching company policy by moonlighting as a security guard and not responding to emails in a timely manner.”
• “On Friday, Ingrasselino told the court that MSG and Eversole’s argument for disqualification comes down to a single phone call, which was later memorialized in an email between Krasnoo and former MSG counsel Kevin Leblang that has already been provided as evidence.”
• “‘The remainder of Krasnoo’s communications to Leblang are short, unambiguous written statements provided in emails, which speak for themselves,’ Ingrasselino said in the brief. ‘The existence of these emails and other documentary evidence should be all the court needs to assess the related legal claims, but should testimony be required regarding the terms and performance of the parties’ agreement to mediate, which is highly unlikely, it can be obtained from [the] plaintiff and defendant MSG’s own witnesses.'”