El Chapo Just Hired The Legendary NYC Mob Lawyer Who Repped John Gotti

NEW YORK, NY — Could El Chapo become the new Teflon Don, Jr.? The accused Mexican drug lord, real name Joaquin Guzman, has hired Jeffrey Lichtman — legendary ex-lawyer of Gambino family mob prince John A. Gotti, son to top boss John J. Gotti — to help him fight charges in Brooklyn federal court of trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine and other drugs into the U.S. from the 1980s through the 2000s.

Lichtman confirmed to Patch that he was hired by El Chapo to represent him in court. "I've been retained but have not yet entered my appearance in the case," the attorney said via email Tuesday. "I'll be his trial lawyer."

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The news of Lichtman's hiring was first reported by Vice, beating out a New York Times reporter who had been on the same trail, Patch has learned.

Back in 2005, while representing Gotti, Lichtman famously accused Manhattan federal prosecutors of lying in the courtroom — at one point, ripping a court agreement to shreds for dramatic effect — and got choked up while railing against the credibility of Michael "Mikey Scars" DiLeonardo, an anti-Gotti witness and Gambino mafia affiliate. He reportedly called the witness a "lying, thieving, two-faced murderous animal who wouldn't know the truth if it jumped up and bit him on the butt," and encouraged jurors with any doubt that Gotti was guilty to "hold onto that like grim death."

Gotti won big with Lichtman on his payroll: His three murder conspiracy charges were dismissed, and he was found "not guilty" of $25 million securities fraud. The mafia son was then given a re-trial on all other charges and freed from jail — earning him the nickname "Teflon, Jr.," a play on the name his dad had earned for constantly wicking off serious charges.

Lichtman's case for freeing the younger Gotti centered largely on the argument that he had abandoned the mafia life into which he was born, and was looking to start fresh as a suburban dad with a minivan.

And that he did: Gotti Jr. has reportedly been living out his golden years with his wife and six kids in a mansion in Oyster Bay Cove, Long Island. (Even as the feds continue to take down other alleged members of the Gambino clan.)

From a New York Times story on Gotti Jr.'s day of acquittal:

After deliberating almost eight days in the six-week trial, the deeply divided jury reached no verdict on the most serious charge against Mr. Gotti, the accusation that he ordered the June 19, 1992, kidnapping of Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels street patrol and a radio talk show host. He was abducted in a taxi in the East Village and shot several times at point-blank range.

The jurors, seven women and five men, had sharply mixed reactions to a case the prosecutors built primarily on the contradictory and often chilling testimony of two high-profile Gambino turncoats, both of whom confessed coolly in court to crimes more bloody than anything in the charges against Mr. Gotti.

Judge Shira A. Scheindlin said that she would allow Mr. Gotti, 41, to go free once he posted bail, rejecting a request from a prosecutor, Michael McGovern, that he remain in jail pending possible retrial.

"The time has come" for Mr. Gotti to be released, Judge Scheindlin said, and applause erupted from the many Gotti clan members in the courtroom, in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

El Chapo, for his part, has been represented solely by public defenders so far in Brooklyn federal court.

They've secured some wins — notably, permission from a judge for the 59-year-old prisoner to exchange sexy letters with his wife, 27-year-old former beauty queen Emma Coronel Aispuro. But their repeated requests that the accused Sinaloa Cartel boss be spared "the evils of prolonged solitary confinement" at the notoriously tough Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, where he's been jailed since January, have all been denied.

Things have gotten so bad in El Chapo's "small, windowless" room in the 10 South wing of the MCC — normally reserved for terrorism suspects — that he's been "experiencing auditory hallucinations" in the form of phantom music, his appointed lawyers claim.

The court hasn't shown much sympathy for El Chapo, who Brooklyn prosecutors argue has the blood of hundreds on his hands. "Along with the proliferation of drugs into our communities, came an onslaught of violent crime," says the indictment against him.

Read up on the charges against the world's most-wanted drug dealer here.

El Chapo's criminal trial is tentatively set to begin in April 2018 — and he's apparently hoping the same barracuda lawman who freed another high-profile NYC crime boss in 2005 can shield him from spending the rest of his life behind bars.

Lichtman, based in Midtown Manhattan, is "nationally known for his successful advocacy on behalf of high profile clients — and for those charged in the most difficult of criminal cases," according to a bio on his website.

"If you hire a law firm which puts the time in, any case is winnable," the site says. "A legal strategy can be found to handle any set of facts as long as your lawyer is willing to think outside the box and truly be innovative. And the concepts we employ to win these high profile cases have been used to assist doctors, attorneys, accountants, hedge fund owners, musicians and police officers win their cases as well."

This story has been updated. Lead photo by Day Donaldson/Flickr