By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
Explosive allegations that a large accounting firm sought to conceal evidence that a Saudi charity helped finance the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are back in the spotlight after a federal judge ordered lawyers for thousands of victims to depose an eyewitness to the alleged coverup scheme.
The witness, former Baker Tilly US director Steven Goldberg, recently came forward and told two plaintiffs’ attorneys about misconduct he said he was aware of while working on behalf of Baker Tilly’s client, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, or WAMY, in the early 2020s, according to court papers filed by the attorneys.
WAMY is a co-defendant with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and many others in sprawling, decadeslong New York civil litigation brought by victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The attacks killed 2,977 people and injured as many as 25,000 more. The 19 mostly Saudi-born terrorists hijacked four U.S. passenger jets, crashing two into New York’s World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and another, after passengers fought back, in a Pennsylvania field.
WAMY is a multinational educational and charitable organization co-founded in 1972 by Abdullah bin Laden, a nephew of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden. Baker Tilly, with offices worldwide including South Florida, was retained by WAMY to opine as an expert in defense of its alleged material support for al Qaeda and the 9/11 Attacks.
A key part of Baker Tilly’s work for WAMY was to review various financial documents and to prepare a report to rebut testimony from a plaintiffs’ expert. The Baker Tilly forensic accountant who signed and submitted that report in 2020 was forensic accountant Jonathan T. Marks. Marks is today a partner in the Tampa office of BDO USA.
Questions about Baker Tilly and its work for WAMY first arose in July 2024, when an anonymous whistleblower sent a letter to Sean Carter, a Philadelphia lawyer who represents companies that suffered damages on 9/11. The letter, later filed in court, said Baker Tilly had found “very damaging evidence against WAMY” and that the firm and Marks “purposely hid these facts.”
The whistleblower also wrote that Marks was secretly coached by Baker Tilly employees, including Goldberg, when he was deposed by Zoom on July 22, 2021.
Both Baker Tilly and WAMY denied wrongdoing and hired outside counsel to investigate independently. Goldberg notably declined to participate. In March 2025, after reviewing video excerpts of Marks’ deposition and holding a hearing on other evidence, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn determined the allegations were not substantiated. The matter faded away.
ALLEGATIONS OF WITNESS COACHING REEMERGE
In April 2026, WAMY asked the court to toss out the case against it. Less than three weeks later, Goldberg and plaintiffs’ attorney Robert Haefele began talking.
Goldberg told Haefele that although he was “physically present” during Marks’ deposition, he was not the author of the anonymous letter. He said “he became aware of that letter from an October 2024 media article published on the Florida Bulldog website” and “the allegations concerning coaching during the deposition as reported in the Florida Bulldog article were substantially consistent with what he personally observed.”
On May 27, Haefele and another plaintiffs’ lawyer, Steven Pounian, spoke in person with Goldberg, according to an Aug. 10 letter they sent to Magistrate Netburn. They wrote that Goldberg told them he had worked extensively on the WAMY matter beginning in 2020 and that “most of the substantive work relating to the engagement was performed by Mr. Goldberg and another Baker Tilly employee, Andy Guzman.”
Marks, Goldberg told them, “devoted minimal time” to WAMY’s work and that neither Marks nor “anyone else at Baker Tilly” wrote the report. The letter does not say if Goldberg named the report’s author.
Haefele, of South Carolina’s Motley Rice law firm, and Pounian, of New York’s Kreindler & Kreindler, told Netburn that Goldberg said WAMY’s lawyer, Omar Mohammedi of New York, “repeatedly provided real-time coaching and direction to Mr. Marks while questions were pending.”
“That coaching included written notes displayed on a Post-it Super Sticky Easel Pad and written prompts placed within Mr. Marks’s view and reviewed by him before he answered; certain answers given by Mr. Marks reflected information and guidance conveyed through those written communications and based upon Mr. Goldberg’s firsthand observations, subsequent representations to Plaintiffs’ counsel and the Court concerning the absence of deposition coaching were inaccurate or misleading,” the letter says.
A CLAIM OF ANTI-MUSLIM ANIMUS
Further, the letter says Goldberg said “Marks’s deposition testimony concerning the authorship of the report and his participation in its preparation was inaccurate.”
Haefele and Pounian sent their Aug. 10 letter to Netburn to ask her to allow them to subpoena Goldberg to provide testimony under oath. They did so after Goldberg apparently got cold feet. The attorneys said he previously told them he was willing to sign “a voluntary declaration memorializing his statements.”
Mohammedi, in an Aug. 13 response to Netburn, asked her to deny the subpoena request. He said Goldberg’s statements included “no new information” and called him the “likely source of the anonymous letter” who was “simply providing the same allegations in a repackaged format.” He added that Haefele and Pounian’s “effort to reopen discovery” on the matter “is in bad faith” and that granting their request “will further increase costs, delay this litigation and expose WAMY’s lead counsel to extreme hostility by attempting to place him in false light. And it will unfairly prejudice the fair litigation of WAMY’s pending motion for summary judgment.”
Mohammedi went on to tell the court that his defense work for WAMY has made him the victim of racial animus.
“WAMY reiterates its previously stated concern, made a part of this record since November 2024, that the recurring, unsubstantiated attacks on a Muslim attorney through anonymous letters and press leaks may not be wholly free of animus unrelated to the merits of this litigation as is fully demonstrated since October 2024 where Counsel Omar T. Mohammedi has been specifically targeted,” he wrote.
Netburn’s Aug. 20 order says Goldberg’s deposition must take place by Sept. 21 and may last only one day. The plaintiffs and WAMY “must receive equal time to question Goldberg,” her order says.
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