Attorney Abbe Lowell stood beside John Bolton in a federal courthouse in Maryland on final week as Donald Trump’s former nationwide safety adviser pleaded not responsible to expenses of mishandling categorized info.
Three days later, Lowell was at a federal appeals court docket in Philadelphia arguing that President Trump’s choice of US attorney for New Jersey is illegal. And on Friday, Lowell will probably be beside New York Attorney General Letitia James in Norfolk, Virginia, as she is arraigned on federal expenses of financial institution fraud and making false statements to a monetary establishment. James has known as the costs “baseless.”
Lowell has for many years been a moth to the flame of Washington politics and scandal. He constructed his popularity by getting politicians out of authorized hassle or advocating pointedly earlier than tv cameras to strive to sway public opinion and affect prosecutors’ resolution making.
Now, at 73, Lowell is among the most outstanding faces defending a lot of Trump’s perceived enemies in prison investigations, safety clearance revocations, and different issues.
“He’s a lawyers’ lawyer in that the politics aren’t what motivates the case,” stated Mark Zaid, a high-profile Washington, DC, lawyer who represents whistleblowers. Zaid employed Lowell and different attorneys when the Trump administration revoked his safety clearance. They filed a lawsuit, which is pending, to strive to get it restored.
“He argues for the rule of law and this administration is subverting the rule of law so much that I wish there was an army of Abbe Lowells who, even if they didn’t have his skill, that they have his desire to uphold the integrity of the system and the principles that this country was founded on,” Zaid stated.
While Lowell is taking over Trump now, his previous shoppers embody Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner once they had been questioned as a part of the particular counsel investigation into Russia’s meddling within the 2016 presidential election. He additionally defended President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, who went to trial and was convicted of gun-related expenses. Biden additionally pleaded responsible to tax crimes. (He was later pardoned.)
Earlier this yr, Lowell left Winston & Strawn, the massive DC legislation agency the place he spent the previous seven years, to arrange his personal agency to signify shoppers within the Trump administration’s crosshairs. He’s bolstered his staff with a cadre of younger legal professionals.
In addition to James, Bolton and Zaid, Lowell can also be representing others focused by Trump, together with Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, former Department of Homeland Security chief of employees Miles Taylor and a number of other former FBI brokers and Justice Department prosecutors who had been fired from their positions.
Lowell declined to be interviewed. In a press release he stated he began his personal agency to fill a necessity.
“The catalyst was the Trump administration’s attempts to use the legal system to silence perceived opponents and critics. I have challenged government overreach in every administration since President Reagan, but the scale and scope of Trump’s intrusion required action,” Lowell stated in a press release to NCS.
Lowell was born within the Bronx, New York, and raised on Long Island the place his father was an insurance coverage agent and his mom was a health care provider’s assistant. He graduated from Columbia Law School and swiftly made his approach to Washington and into politics.
He served as counsel to House Democrats throughout President Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings. Soon thereafter Lowell represented California Democratic Rep. Gary Condit through the disappearance of intern Chandra Levy in 2001. Condit was interviewed by the police amid reviews of a romantic relationship together with her. He declined to communicate to the media, whereas Lowell steadily sparred with journalists on TV. Condit was by no means charged with any wrongdoing.
Former Democratic presidential candidate and Sen. John Edwards employed Lowell when he went on trial on marketing campaign finance expenses. The trial dominated the headlines. Edwards was acquitted of 1 cost and the jury deadlocked on others.
“In these politically charged cases you have to wear two hats. You have to be traditionally good in court … but then you also have to have some sophistication about the way Washington works. Abbe wears both,” stated Reid Weingarten, a Washington prison defense lawyer and long-time pal of Lowell’s. “I think the Edwards trial sent him on the path to become a defense attorney trial guy.”
Weingarten encountered Lowell many years earlier when he was a prosecutor investigating a Tennessee lawmaker who Lowell represented.
“Each thing he handled he took incredibly seriously like there was nothing more important than this particular matter, this client, this cross examination. It accounts for much of his success,” stated Weingarten. “He devotes his all to it and Abbe’s all is way more than most.” (The lawmaker was not charged with any wrongdoing.)
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez turned to Lowell when he confronted bribery expenses in 2017. Then, a Newark jury failed to attain a verdict and a federal decide later acquitted Menendez on some expenses. (Menendez was convicted in 2024 on completely different bribery expenses in New York. Lowell didn’t signify him at trial).
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Lowell additionally represented Matthew Grimes, a former assistant to Trump donor and loyalist Tom Barrack. Barrack, who’s now US ambassador to Turkey, and Grimes had been each acquitted of federal expenses of appearing as overseas brokers.
During the trial, Lowell fumbled along with his microphone as he spoke with the jury and skim aloud textual content messages, translating emojis as “smiley face,” that Grimes despatched to an abroad counterpart who was a part of the alleged scheme.
One individual concerned within the case, who didn’t need to be recognized, stated Lowell’s actions appeared to disarm his shopper to the jury and turned the allegedly prison exchanges into seemingly benign chats between younger males wanting to impress one another.
“He understands all the intangibles that go into presenting to a jury that’s different from the facts and the law. Those are the things that make him a very good lawyer,” stated one lawyer who has opposed him.
“Outside of the courtroom, generally, he’s a tough guy. He’s no holds-barred – a lot of posturing, a lot of self-righteousness. It worked for him,” the individual stated.
Lowell’s posturing and what some legal professionals describe as brash method aren’t with out controversy.
He took over Hunter Biden’s illustration after a plea deal to finish the prison investigation blew up spectacularly throughout a court docket listening to, ending any potential for the case to be resolved earlier than his father’s re-election marketing campaign.
Lowell shifted the technique to a extra aggressive public posture, sparring with Republicans on the hill and teeing the case for trial.
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During the trial, lurid particulars of Hunter Biden’s drug use and intercourse life spilled into the general public in the course of Biden’s re-election marketing campaign.
During opening arguments, Lowell leaned into Biden’s drug use as one thing thousands and thousands of Americans cope with. At one level whereas Lowell was talking, one juror appeared to develop into emotional, reaching for tissues in her bag and dabbed her eyes and her nostril a number of instances.
Lowell used the identical direct method in representing James, writing pointed letters to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Ed Martin, who was named particular attorney for mortgage fraud on the Justice Department.
In August, Martin criticized Lowell’s techniques, writing in a personal letter, “Because of your reputation for using the media to argue your points, I prefer that we communicate by letter. I find leaks like your Bondi letter professionally unacceptable and personally insulting. To that end, I specifically ask that you redouble your efforts to not leak this confidential letter.”
Six days later, Lowell replied.
“You cannot unilaterally conduct a media campaign to prejudice and intimidate my client and expect there will be no similar public response,” Lowell wrote. “And, whenever you do bring your threatened action, please explain to the judges before whom you file all that you have been saying and doing.”