Attorney Abbe Lowell, representing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, arrives at federal court docket in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
When President Donald Trump abruptly introduced final week that he had fired Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, a legendary Washington lawyer shortly stepped into the world.
Abbe Lowell has represented New York Attorney General Letitia James, Hunter Biden, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and several other different high-profile political shoppers, each Republicans and Democrats.
Now he’s on the heart of Trump’s bid to increase his authority over federal regulators.
Before Trump introduced he was firing Cook on Aug. 25, no American president had ever tried to unilaterally take away a Fed governor, pushing Cook and the central financial institution into uncharted authorized territory.
But for Lowell, a fixture in Washington authorized circles for many years, combating a presidential administration’s try to exert management over federal regulators is nothing new.
“I have basically challenged the overreach of federal agencies in every administration since Ronald Reagan’s,” Lowell stated on MSNBC final month.
“Didn’t matter whether it’s a Democratic or Republican administration. If the government overreaches, then [the] lawyer’s job is to put the government in the right place,” he added.
Cook and James are among the newer names of the prolonged consumer listing Lowell has constructed over time.
James gained a civil fraud case against Trump and his household enterprise in 2023. The penalty in the case — roughly $500 million — was thrown out last month.
That identical month, the Trump Justice Department launched a federal grand jury investigation into James over alleged “mortgage fraud.”
The allegations against James have been publicly leveled earlier this 12 months by the identical Trump ally, Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, who made the claims against Cook.
Lowell, not afraid to function the assault canine for his shoppers, has called the investigation into James “the most blatant and desperate example of this administration carrying out the president’s political retribution campaign.”
Lowell, 73, has additionally represented a number of different high-profile shoppers throughout his profession, together with Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the president’s son-in-law and eldest daughter.
Kushner and Ivanka Trump retained Lowell throughout Trump’s first time period to characterize them in a particular counsel probe of Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
Former Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., employed Lowell’s then-firm to defend him in a 2017 federal bribery case that ended in a mistrial. Menendez was convicted in a separate federal bribery case final 12 months.
Lowell additionally defended Hunter Biden, who was convicted last year on federal gun associated expenses, earlier than being pardoned by his father, former President Joe Biden.
Lowell additionally served as minority counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee throughout impeachment proceedings against former President Bill Clinton in 1998.
But since Trump’s return, the majority of Lowell’s shoppers have been people focused by the Trump administration, giving him a well-recognized playbook as he takes on the White House in authorized filings and in the courtroom.
“The difference,” he says, between the Trump administration and different administrations, is that the Trump White House overreaches “over and over again.”
“So I guess the bottom line is this is consistent with what I and the people I’m working with have always done. There’s just more of it to do,” Lowell stated on NPR’s “Morning Edition” last month.
Following a well-recognized technique in Cook’s case as in his others, Lowell shortly filed a lawsuit on her behalf final week after Trump moved to fireplace her over unsupported allegations of mortgage fraud.
“Nothing in these vague, unsubstantiated allegations has any relevance to Gov. Cook’s role at the Federal Reserve, and they in no way justify her removal from the Board,” Lowell stated in an announcement on Friday, after Pulte filed a second legal referral against Cook with the Justice Department.
Lowell additionally sharply criticized the trouble throughout a Friday court docket listening to on the matter that ended without an immediate decision.
A query in Cook’s case is whether or not the alleged mortgage fraud is enough for Trump to take away Cook “for cause,” which is the brink below the Federal Reserve Act. Pulte first raised and has relentlessly promoted the mortgage fraud allegations.
“You can’t have Director Pulte’s crazy midnight tweets be the cause” for which Cook is eliminated, Lowell stated in the course of the listening to.
Earlier this 12 months, Lowell left Winston & Strawn, the place he was a accomplice, and founded his own firm, Lowell & Associates. His boutique agency has shortly developed a roster of shoppers who’ve been targets of the Trump administration.
And he seems unlikely to cease taking over the administration anytime quickly.
During the latest NPR interview, Lowell in contrast James’ case to George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” noting “the famous line about a government that engages in what’s called doublespeak.”
“I mean, think about what the president is doing. He has an office in the Department of Justice that is called something about the anti-weaponization office,” he stated, including that “they are using that office to weaponize the Justice Department against the president’s adversaries.”
“I know we get inured to the excess of authority that is happening in the last six months, but this strikes at such – the heart of the rule of law that people should pay attention,” he stated.