Abbe Lowell atty
Lowell was born in 1952.[2] He graduated from Columbia University in 1974 and Columbia Law School in 1977.[3][4][5] Lowell is Jewish.[6]
Career
Lowell worked in the U.S. Department of Justice, including a stint as an assistant to Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti.[7][when?] He has been an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center and Columbia University.[8][when?] He was a partner at the firm of Winston & Strawn LLP.[9] He has appeared in the media as a legal affairs expert.[10]
Lowell was chief minority counsel to U.S. House of Representatives Democratic members during the impeachment of Bill Clinton in the Lewinsky scandal.[11]
Lowell has defended political figures including John Edwards,[12] Jim Wright, Dan Rostenkowski, Charles Keating,[13] Gary Condit,[14] former Nevada governor Jim Gibbons,[15] former congressman Joseph McDade,[16] lobbyist Jack Abramoff,[11] and U.S. senator Bob Menendez.[17]
Lowell was part of the defense of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim,[18] a State Department contractor who pleaded guilty to a felony count of disclosing classified American intelligence on North Korea.
As of June 2017, Lowell has represented both Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump in inquiries linked to Russia.[19][20][21]
Lowell represented Nickie Lum Davis, who pleaded guilty in August 2020 to illegally lobbying the Trump administration on behalf of international fugitive Jho Low. In 2017, Lowell was also involved in discussions about Low's legal and lobbying efforts, which were designed to end the Justice Department's probe of the embezzlement of around $4.5 billion from the Malaysian state fund 1MDB.[22][23]
In 2021, Lowell represented Michael Taylor, the American soldier accused of helping Carlos Ghosn escape from Japan. At the time, Taylor was fighting extradition to Japan.[24]
As of May, 2025, Lowell left Winston & Strawn and started a new law firm.[25]
In August 2025, it was reported that Lowell was hired by Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook to defend her against being fired by President Donald Trump for alleged mortgage fraud. Cook argued that her firing is illegal.[26] Lowell represented Letitia James against accusations of mortgage fraud.[27]
Justice Department investigation
As of December 2020, the United States Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section was investigating Lowell for his role in an alleged "secret lobbying scheme" and potential bribery in exchange for a pardon. Lowell was enlisted by California billionaire Sanford Diller to seek a pardon for his friend Hugh Baras.[28]
Lowell's involvement came to light in an August 28, 2020 court opinion by Judge Beryl Howell that found Lowell's communications were not covered by standard attorney-client privileges "because they potentially contained both evidence of crimes and involved nonlawyer third parties." As part of the alleged bribery-for-pardon scheme, Lowell interacted with the White House Counsel's Office, and "according to documents reviewed by the [Wall Street] Journal, Mr. Lowell and Mr. Diller discussed contacting top officials in the [Trump] administration."[28] The scheme would allegedly have involved a donation of more than $300,000 to Republican Party causes. However, no pardon for Baras was issued, and the investigation did not result in criminal charges.[29]
Political and civic activities
In 1982, Lowell ran unsuccessfully for the Maryland House of Delegates as a Democrat.[2] Lowell heads the development committee and is a trustee of the Shakespeare Theatre. He also served as vice president and general counsel of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington in 2020.[30]
References
woki david weiss
Hunter Biden's attorney Abbe Lowell called the investigation "a cautionary tale of the abuse of prosecutorial power" and stated that the report "continues to ignore some of the major mysteries of his 7-year investigation," including Weiss's 2023 proposal to resolve the case with misdemeanor charges.[88] House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer called the report "incomplete" because President Biden's pardon prevented Weiss from pursuing additional charges.[90]
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AN 3 26
President Donald Trump is continuing his “improper revenge campaign” against New York Attorney General Letitia James — and she is fighting it actively.
“President Donald Trump’s top housing official Bill Pulte issued two new criminal referrals for New York Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday, attempting to revive the administration’s ongoing legal pursuit of one of his political opponents,” reported CNN on Wednesday, adding that the referrals were sent to Illinois and Florida for “suspected homeowners insurance fraud.” The Justice Department confirmed to CNN that “referrals were received by our US Attorney Offices,” while James' attorney Abbe Lowell accused Trump of continuing his “improper revenge campaign instead of helping bring down the rising cost of living in this country.”
The lawyer added in a statement to CNN, “Frustrated by repeated failures, where judges and grand juries have rejected their attempts to charge Attorney General James, Trump and his political enablers keep abusing their power to pursue a vendetta against her by trying to rename, refile, and repeat baseless allegations. They continue this improper revenge campaign instead of helping bring down the rising cost of living in this country.”
Lowell also predicted that “these desperate tactics will fail — just as every previous attempt has failed — and exposes an Administration that has abandoned its responsibility to the American people in favor of petty political payback.”
Among the “previous attempts” mentioned by Lowell was an October indictment on one count of making false statements to a financial institution and one count of bank fraud. A judge dismissed that case after Trump’s appointment of interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan in Alexandria, Va. was deemed invalid. Other Trump prosecutions of his political enemies have also failed.
“This is how grand juries were meant to work,” UC Berkeley Criminal Justice Center Director Chesa Boudin and UC Davis Law Professor Eric S. Fish wrote in The New York Times about Trump’s failures to prosecute people he dislikes for political reasons such as James, adding that “a primary security to the innocent against hasty, malicious and oppressive persecution.” When U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie dismissed Trump’s attempted prosecution of another political enemy, former FBI Director James Comey, in November, she made it clear she had done so because of the sloppy methods Trump used to prosecute the case.
“Because Ms. Halligan had no lawful authority to present the indictment, I will grant Mr. Comey’s motion and dismiss the indictment without prejudice,” Currie explained.
Dickinson College President John E. Jones III, a former federal judge, told The Conversation’s politics editor Naomi Schalit that when grand juries reject Trump’s attempted prosecutions, they do so to defy an overreach of power.
“The grand jury would have to totally reject the whole premise of the case that’s being presented to them by the United States attorney because, remember, there are typically no witnesses appearing before the grand jury to dispute the facts,” Jones told Schalit. “The grand jury is clearly saying, ‘Even accepting the facts you’re putting before us as true, we don’t think under these circumstances this case is worthy of a federal indictment.’”
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