Abbe Lowell, a longtime Washington litigator who’s represented Democrats and Republicans facing politically contentious cases, has a new bloc of clients since launching his own firm earlier this year: enemies of the Trump administration.
Lowell has decades of experience defending high-profile legislators and political figures on both sides of the aisle, including Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election, and Hunter Biden in his two criminal cases.
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He has represented both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, including former Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez and former Republican Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, in their corruption trials or investigations. He also defended President Bill Clinton during his impeachment in the 1990s.
Having established his own firm in May, Lowell is reaching star status as one of the top defense attorneys in Washington for Trump’s biggest political adversaries. His most recent client is Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, whom Trump is attempting to fire this week over allegations that she committed mortgage fraud.
Lowell, on behalf of Cook, is leading the lawsuit against Trump over the firing, with the case likely to go before the Supreme Court. The outcome will have major implications not only for the future of the central bank and economy but also for how far the president’s executive authority extends.
The litigator called Trump’s decision to terminate Cook an “illegal action.”
“President Trump has no authority to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook,” Lowell said in a statement Thursday. “His attempt to fire her, based solely on a referral letter, lacks any factual or legal basis.”
Lowell is representing other people who have drawn ire from Trump and Republicans, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, who, like Cook, is being investigated for mortgage fraud.
Other clients include former Homeland Security official Miles Taylor, whom Trump directed his senior administration members to investigate after the president accused him of treason, and longtime Washington attorney Mark Zaid, whose security clearance of over 20 years was revoked by Trump.
“President Trump campaigned on this,” Lowell said on MSNBC in early August when discussing the investigation into James and other investigations. “It didn’t take him long after getting elected that he created people that would carry this out.”
He said the separation of power between the White House and the Justice Department is “supposed to have existed at some level.”
“I don’t think there’s been an attorney general that has been willing to carry out the president’s wrongdoing as much as Pam Bondi has since, oh, I’d say John Mitchell with President Nixon,” Lowell added.
The litigator is also representing victims of the Trump administration’s decision to clean house and reduce the federal workforce, a move that has dismantled federal agencies and cut billions in foreign aid.
Lowell has been hired by Mary Comans, a top Federal Emergency Management Agency official who was dismissed for dispersing payments to house migrants that were dictated under the Biden administration, and David Huerta, the president of the Service Employees International Union of California, who was arrested protesting immigration raids in Los Angeles.
He is also representing veteran FBI officials who were terminated after immense pressure from the MAGA base and former Jan. 6 prosecutors, who have been systematically fired since January.
Lowell’s decision to take on Trump’s perceived enemies comes at a time when several law firms are seeking favor with the president. Trump has accused many in the legal community of weaponizing the law against him. He has targeted specific law firms in several executive orders and asked the Justice Department to investigate and possibly sanction additional firms and groups accused of punishing Trump-aligned lawyers.
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Lowell appeared on The Contrarian podcast last week to discuss his representation of both James and Taylor. He said some of the clients he represented were “very different” cases, but all were spurred by a common denominator.
“They all stand for the proposition of something completely unprecedented,” Lowell told host Jen Rubin. “Which is the full power of the federal government being pointed in the direction of … individual people in the United States who happen to be adverse to this administration’s policies or who have criticized them. … It’s extraordinary.”
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