Joe Arpaio’s attorney was disbarred and is now doing stand-up comedy

When Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio battled contempt of court charges in 2017, Mark Goldman was hard to miss.

The Scottsdale attorney cut a flamboyant figure. Goldman rocked silk ties, a diamond earring, a piratelike jet-black beard and long black hair pulled back into a ponytail. As he defended Arpaio in court and helped him win a presidential pardon from Donald Trump — and, later, as he tried to get actor Steven Seagal out of jury duty — Goldman became a wacky character in Arizona’s legal community.

But Goldman’s a member of that community no more. On Aug. 15, the State Bar of Arizona revoked his law license over a slew of ethical violations. Goldman had stopped communicating with his clients and had failed to show up for court hearings. He hadn’t complied with subpoenas and mishandled client funds, according to the bar.

A three-person disciplinary panel found that Goldman "knowingly violated duties owed to his clients, the legal system, and the legal profession," according to State Bar records, thereby causing "substantial harm" in the process. Eight days after a bar hearing — which Goldman skipped — the panel ordered him disbarred “effective immediately.”

Not that Goldman particularly cares.

"I don't have to worry about what I said or to whom," he told Phoenix New Times. "I'm no longer under the yoke of these, essentially, fascists who want to control what you say."

Goldman said he now works as a legal clerk, which doesn’t require a law license. But that’s just his day job. In his free time, he pursues a new passion: stand-up comedy.

Instead of lobbing objections in court and penning legal briefs, he writes set-ups and tosses out punchlines. Stand-up, he said, “is so much better than arguing with nitwits all day.”

Goldman shared some videos of his act. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his head shaved but with the same trademark beard, Goldman workshops his act at local comedy clubs. One joke begins with police discovering a dead body "with a box of Cheerios up his butt." The punch line? "They think it's a cereal killer."

Hey, no one’s George Carlin right away.

His act may be a work in progress, but Goldman would rather be doing this than lawyering. The last several years have been difficult, as State Bar documents partially attest. A 2021 heart attack and a rough divorce rattled him. He repeatedly dropped the ball for his clients and with the bar, though he still offers excuses for those failings.

But now he has a new house and a new, younger girlfriend. Most importantly, he's free from what he described as the tyranny of the State Bar and a profession that’s provided more joke fodder than just about any other.

"When you're dependent on being a lawyer, they really have you by the nuts,” Goldman said. “So, I have freedom now. I just don't care. And I'm happy about that.”

How it fell apart

Before he gained media attention as Sheriff Joe’s lawyer, Goldman was a wealthy player in local Republican circles.

He was a major donor and pro bono aide to former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, who was disbarred in 2012 for unethical conduct. But aside from unsuccessfully trying to get Seagal out of jury duty, Goldman is best known for defending Arpaio during his 2017 criminal contempt trial.

That effort went about as well as Seagal’s jury duty saga. That July, a federal judge found Arpaio guilty of criminal contempt for flouting U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow’s order that Arpaio's office stop detaining people on suspicion of being in the country illegally. But less than a month after the conviction, and before Arpaio was sentenced, Trump pardoned Arpaio, a situation Goldman helped engineer.

Until 2022, though, Goldman maintained a spotless record with the state bar.

That year, the bar filed a one-count complaint concerning his behavior in a 2021 federal court case. Goldman’s heart attack delayed a scheduling conference in the case. Goldman also missed the rescheduled hearing and didn’t respond to inquiries from U.S. Magistrate Judge James Metcalf, who referred the matter to another judge for a civil contempt hearing. Goldman missed that hearing, too — Goldman said he was “pretty weakened” and that his doctors had ordered him not to leave the house — forcing federal Judge Diane Humetewa to issue a warrant for his arrest.

Goldman said federal marshals in SWAT gear busted down his door while he was in his underwear, pointed guns at him and hauled him into court “wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants with my hair sticking up in the air because they wouldn’t give me time to put on a suit.” Afterward, he had to ask the marshals to take him back home. "I didn't have my wallet or anything,” he said. “I couldn't even order an Uber." Goldman claimed he had to reimburse the marshals $750 for the ride.

Humetewa found him in contempt of court and gave him a list of tasks to complete within 10 days. Goldman missed that deadline even though, according to the State Bar, he was "actively representing clients in other matters and appearing virtually for numerous court hearings” during the saga. Humetewa later ordered Goldman off the case that started out in Metcalf's court.

Goldman expressed regrets for some of his actions at a bar hearing in August 2023, though bar records say “the hearing panel did not find his professed regret to be particularly sincere.” It’s not hard to see why. At the same hearing, Goldman argued that Metcalf was “not a true ‘judge,’” accused Humetewa of “conducting a ‘show trial’” and labeled court staff as “rude” and “robotic.” He also lambasted his own clients as “ignorant, angry, greedy, nasty, belligerent, confrontational and irrational.”

The bar hit him with a 30-day suspension and placed him on probation for two years. Soon, he was in disfavor with the bar again, this time for allegedly screwing up a case that cost the client $40,000. Goldman defied a State Bar subpoena for his client file and was found in contempt of court. He skipped the panel hearing and wound up a three-year suspension this March.

In June, the State Bar filed a seven-count complaint that accused Goldman of a host of failures, including not appearing for court dates, not answering subpoenas and not informing clients of his suspension. The bar complaint also alleged that during Goldman’s divorce proceedings, he failed to comply with court orders, refused to leave a residence that was to be sold as part of the divorce settlement and engaged in "abusive and obstreperous behavior with opposing counsel and court-appointed professionals."

Goldman again deflected blame “To say that these venues were a confederacy of dunces is an understatement,” Goldman wrote in a filing to the bar, adding that the family law judges and lawyers “were incompetent and dishonest.”

On Sept. 4, the bar officially ordered Goldman's name "stricken from the roll of lawyers in Arizona."

Free at last

Goldman blames his tsuris with the bar on his ill health and the aftereffects of the widowmaker heart attack he had in 2021.

"It's the worst heart attack you could possibly have," he said. "The survival rate is 10% and the first symptom is sudden death."

In its wake, Goldman said he began having trouble remembering things. His doctors gave him cognitive tests, which he passed. They told him he was OK, but he was confused. He'd never had to take notes before, and now he had to.

Goldman said his symptoms progressed to the point that he had to take "copious amounts of Adderall" to stay awake in court. A year after his heart attack, he passed out and was rushed to the hospital. His doctors told him he had “severe” type 2 diabetes and was close to slipping into a diabetic coma.

Goldman said he informed the bar but received no mercy or offers of help. Unsurprisingly, he does not hold the bar in high esteem. Most attorneys, even the most pugnacious ones, are “pussies” when it comes to the State Bar, he said. A spokesperson for the State Bar did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

But that's all in the rearview now. Stand-up comedy is what lies ahead of him. He discovered his passion for it after a trip to the Tempe Improv with his girlfriend. A quasi-star with a Netflix show was headlining, but Goldman wasn’t impressed.

"I just said to myself, ‘I could do 10 times better than this guy,’” Goldman said. “What a joke."

Goldman said he’s taken the microphone at several open-mic nights around town, but they don't give him much time to tell his stories. He's got plenty of them. “I have not hours but days of material,” he said. He’s looking for an agent “to get me some real gigs, like in Las Vegas, opening there for people.”

Whether the Strip is more welcoming to Goldman than an Arizona courtroom remains to be seen. There’s no licensing body for aspiring comedians, only the verdict of the audience’s laughter. Goldman may have been ordered to stop lawyering, but he insists people want him to keep telling jokes.

"Now I just get up there on stage, and before I know it, it's over,” he said. ‘But the crowd wants me to keep going. They tell me, 'Don't stop.'"