![]() Addicted to heroin, he and an accomplice broke into a Pelham Bay home to score in December 2005 when the neighbor, an off-duty police officer, stopped Brancato, his accomplice shot the cop to death. In 2008, Tacopina was hired by an actor named Lillo Brancato, a Yonkers kid who starred in A Bronx Tale alongside Robert De Niro and played a Jersey hood in the second season of The Sopranos. ![]() Then came the celebrities - which sometimes pissed off the cops. (Kerik later pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the same allegation under different legal representation.) Despite Kerik’s admission of receiving over $200,000 in what amounted to bribes while in office, Tacopina helped get the charges reduced to two misdemeanors, and his client paid only fines. When Bernie Kerik was charged with accepting favors from contractors with mob ties as police commissioner, Tacopina helped work out a generous plea deal. Over the years, he has retained clients higher in the NYPD’s ranks. In his early days, his most prominent trials involved NYPD officers accused of terrible crimes - like the cop who allegedly penetrated the anus of the detained Abner Louima with a broomstick in 1997 and whose obstruction conviction Tacopina got overturned on appeal. ![]() “Having Joe be the person who is going to try the case changes the perspective of the other side because now they’re like, Oh shit,” says John Goldman, a settlement negotiator who has worked with Tacopina.Īfter four years as a prosecutor in Brooklyn, where he says he won 39 of 40 cases that went to trial, Tacopina began his career as a defense attorney in 1995. He still holds the Skidmore College men’s hockey record for penalty minutes. On his right forearm, above the fat silver chain he often wears on his wrist, is a “Carpe diem” tattoo in all-caps cursive. And I will make sure the jury sees your innards coming out of you.” He certainly cut an intimidating figure in his Madison Avenue office during a recent interview. When he was 20 years younger, he described his tactics simply: “I will do it slowly and methodically. “I’ve been told by many that I’m the best cross-examiner in the country,” he said. For almost 30 years, Tacopina has been winning cases for celebrities, cops, and other denizens of “Page Six,” earning him a reputation as one of the city’s most high-profile defense attorneys thanks to one skill in particular. Thankfully for Trump, his new attorney is not in the business of losing very often. (Carroll’s attorney, the star lawyer Roberta Kaplan, declined to comment.) “There’s no losing this case,” he said of the high stakes. Tacopina declined to speak directly about the case but vouched for his client’s innocence. (With the criminal statute of limitations long past, Carroll is suing Trump in civil court under a new law that opens a yearlong window for accusers to sue, regardless of when the alleged abuse took place.) In addition to battery, she is suing Trump for defamation following his notorious denial that he did not force himself on her because, he said, she is “not my type.” Trump is expected to be called to give testimony when the trial starts in Manhattan on April 25. “I don’t golf.”Īfter more than two dozen women accused Trump of sexual misconduct, he will soon go on trial to face claims by Carroll, first made in New York, that he had raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s. After a couple of meals with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, he hurried home to start working on the defense. “When we get involved with someone, we do a deep dive.” He did some triage and decided the most pressing case was the one brought by E. “I said, ‘Guys, I’m not going to be involved in ten cases,’” Tacopina explained. At first, Trump and his advisers wanted to scatter his attention across multiple fronts. In January, trial attorney Joe Tacopina flew from his Connecticut home to Florida to meet with Donald Trump, who was in need of more lawyers to represent him in a year of astonishing legal exposure.
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