Alex Rodriguez may have dropped all of his lawsuits on Friday pertaining to the 162-game suspension he has been ordered to serve, but one of his attorneys is not done taking legal action. Joe Tacopina, one of New York’s top criminal defense lawyers, has filed a $15 million defamation lawsuit against two NY Daily News reporters.
According to The Star-Ledger, the suit accuses Nathaniel Vinton and Michael O’Keeffe of being “obsessed with ridding the sports world for performance-enhancing drugs” to the point where they tried to discredit Tacopina by getting one of his past clients, New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, to file a false ethics claim against him.
Tacopina alleged that Vinton and O’Keeffee wrote a “hit piece” on him and unfairly covered the A-Rod saga in an attempt to persecute the New York Yankees slugger.
Tacopina also claims in the suit that Kerik is a “convicted felon” who attempted to clear his name by blaming his criminal convictions for corruption and fraud on his former lawyer (Tacopina). Kerik was sentenced to four years in prison in 2010 after admitting to tax fraud and lying to the White House while he was being considered for the Homeland Security secretary job.
Vinton and O’Keeffe said in pieces they have written that Tacopina “disclosed privileged information in his case and had failed to notify (Kerik) that he’d been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors.” Tacopina claims those allegations, among others, are false.
The song that never ends must go on
