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The Go-To Lawyer for Trump’s Targets
Abbe Lowell’s clients include a Fed governor and New York’s attorney general—and formerly members of the Trump family.
When legal drama arises in Washington, the longtime defense lawyer Abbe Lowell often has a piece of it. No stranger to the limelight, he is eagerly stepping into it in President Trump’s second term, with a client list of administration targets growing by the week.
His latest addition is among his most consequential: Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, who is fighting Trump’s attempt to fire her, a battle that could have long-term ramifications for the central bank and for the scope of presidential power.
Lowell, 73 years old, is also representing New York Attorney General Letitia James, former Homeland Security official Miles Taylor and a whistleblower lawyer critical of the president, who are all under fire from Trump. Lowell was also involved in a case that successfully challenged the installation of Alina Habba, a former personal lawyer for Trump, as the top U.S. prosecutor in New Jersey.
After about seven years at the law firm Winston & Strawn, Lowell this year launched a boutique firm that he has turned into a platform for taking on the administration. Having his own practice, he said, gives him more opportunity to do defense work fighting the White House.
“The big-firm model couldn’t do that easily,” Lowell said.
His new model also comes with challenges, including how to build a business. He is doing work for Trump foes at discounted rates but is using the visibility to help build out a roster of full-freight clients.
It is a new chapter for a lawyer who has earned a reputation as a dogged, if prickly, defense attorney for prominent figures embroiled in political controversies, investigations and, in some instances, scandal.
Born in the Bronx, the Columbia Law School graduate worked at the Justice Department under the Carter administration. He later served as the House Democrats’ chief investigative counsel defending against the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. In private practice, he burnished his reputation as a trial lawyer by defending embattled politicians, including the former vice-presidential nominee John Edwards and then-Sen. Bob Menendez, from corruption charges.
Lowell prides himself on representing clients on both sides of the political aisle. And he has history as an advocate for the Trump family. He represented Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, in a special-counsel investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
“He’s a ferocious, tenacious fighter,” said the lawyer Norm Eisen, a friend who works with him often. “That’s why the closest family members of both prior presidents have retained him.”
While Lowell is seen as a formidable opponent in the courtroom, some lawyers, including past colleagues, find him polarizing. He had a reputation as something of a solo operator even when working at a bigger firm. Some former colleagues said he has a penchant for self-promotion that stands out even in an industry where swagger is often the norm.
Lowell’s most visible work in recent years was for Hunter Biden, whom he defended in two criminal cases brought by a Justice Department special counsel, as well as in a Republican-led congressional investigation. His arrival on Biden’s legal team heralded a shift to a more aggressive, bare-knuckled approach putting the president’s son on the offensive.
That included a lawsuit the younger Biden filed against the Internal Revenue Service under his own father’s administration, alleging that agency investigators violated his privacy rights. Biden dropped the lawsuit earlier this year, about a month after Lowell withdrew from the case.
In Delaware, a jury found Biden guilty of all three felony gun charges he faced. Biden pleaded guilty months later, on the eve of trial in California, to a raft of tax charges. He was pardoned by his father weeks before he was set to face sentencing. Shortly before the pardon, Lowell released a white paper saying the younger Biden was the victim of political persecution.
While Lowell has reeled in high-profile work, legal revenue hasn’t always followed, sometimes causing consternation with his partners. In June, Winston & Strawn sued Biden, alleging that he owed the firm “substantially in excess of $50,000.” Biden hasn’t yet filed a response to the lawsuit, and the case is ongoing.
Lowell’s new firm currently has five lawyers and three staffers. In addition to associates he brought with him from Winston & Strawn, he hired two lawyers who publicly resigned from Skadden, a top law firm that pledged $100 million in pro bono work to Trump’s favored causes to avoid a punitive White House executive order.
Lowell said mutual friends connected him to Cook, whom President Joe Biden nominated as Fed governor in 2022, and James, a Democrat who has been New York’s attorney general since 2019.
James brought a civil-fraud case alleging that Trump misrepresented his wealth for financial gain. She won after a nonjury trial last year, but an appeals court recently gutted much of her victory. The Justice Department is now investigating whether she violated Trump’s civil rights. It is also reviewing allegations of mortgage fraud, which she denies.
Lowell has accused the Justice Department of engaging in political retribution. In a letter this month, he offered a host of criticisms of Ed Martin, a special attorney appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, including his posing for a media photo outside James’s Brooklyn residence. “One has no conceivable idea of any proper or legitimate reason you went to Ms. James’ house,” Lowell wrote.
In other matters, he is challenging the administration’s decisions to strip security clearances from Taylor, the former Homeland Security official, and a whistleblower lawyer, Mark Zaid. Taylor, former chief of staff at DHS, wrote an anonymous New York Times essay in 2018 that criticized the president and other members of the administration. Zaid represented an intelligence official who alleged that Trump improperly sought aid from Ukraine to help his re-election.
Lowell’s firm is also representing Justice Department officials who say they were improperly fired by Bondi, including a former prosecutor involved in the wave of cases stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Lowell said that while his firm isn’t only focused on Trump cases, he expects the president to keep him busy. “I can imagine that there is no dearth of work to do as long as this man is in the White House,” he said.
Write to Erin Mulvaney at erin.mulvaney@wsj.com and C. Ryan Barber at ryan.barber@wsj.com
