Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell

Summary

On with Kara Swisher

Episode: Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell
Date: February 9, 2026
Host: Kara Swisher
Guest: Abbe Lowell (defense attorney)
Special Guest Question: Jodi Kantor (NYT investigative reporter)

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Episode Overview

This episode features an in-depth conversation with Abbe Lowell, a high-profile Washington defense attorney renowned for representing figures targeted by the Trump administration. Lowell and Swisher discuss the chilling environment for lawyers and journalists as the Trump administration openly uses government power for retribution, examines Lowell's recent and ongoing cases (Don Lemon, Letitia James, Lisa Cook), and dig into the crumbling insulation traditionally provided by law, courts, and the First Amendment. Throughout, Swisher and Lowell reflect on the transformation of American legal, political, and journalistic institutions, threats to democracy, and whether the current pushback will be enough.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Big Law Crisis: Why Major Firms Won’t Fight Trump (03:31–11:53)

• Corporate Reticence and Big Firm Acquiescence
  • Big firms increasingly put bottom-line above principle, unwilling to risk government ire for fear of jeopardizing lucrative client business subject to regulatory approval.
  • Abbe Lowell (04:09):

    "Law firms stopped being professions and started being businesses. And that's not the way it should have been."

  • Lowell left Winston & Strawn after his firm declined cases that would challenge the Trump administration – initially regarding FBI agents' anonymity, then USAID workers, and finally Letitia James, which was the “last straw.”
• Broader Impact
  • The breakdown of traditional legal ethos: pro bono efforts for nonprofits and community agencies evaporate as firms retreat from contentious or controversial representation.
  • Lowell (10:45):

    "That was a lack of leadership across the board of lawyers in America. I understand it, but I don't agree with it."

2. Case Study: The Arrest of Don Lemon (11:53–27:45)

• Timeline and Details of the Case
  • Don Lemon, veteran journalist, was arrested in LA after covering a protest in Minneapolis at a church led by an ICE official.
  • Don Lemon's arrest was by design a public spectacle:
    • He was not a flight risk and had offered to surrender, but was arrested late at night to maximize humiliation and disruption.
    • Lowell (15:08):

      "What we know about this administration is show first, substance second, if at all."

• Administration Boasting and the Function of Fear
  • Attorney General Pam Bondi publicly took credit, and the White House celebrated on social media, escalating the intimidation campaign against both journalists and protestors.
  • Lowell emphasized the unprecedented and deliberate nature of these attacks, noting the historical role of lawyers and journalists as vital checks on power.
  • Lowell (17:32):

    "When this administration was planning their return, ... their first attack ... was to go after the lawyers and to go after the journalists."

• Prosecutorial Irregularities
  • Both a magistrate judge and appeals court refused to issue warrants, but the administration used a grand jury—the “ham sandwich” standard—to secure charges.
  • Selective prosecution is clear, with similar protests by right-wing figures ignored by the DOJ.
  • Lowell (21:13):

    "This is the definition of selective prosecution for a political purpose."

• Broader Impact on Press Freedom
  • Even narrow or failed prosecutions create chilling effects, disrupt careers, and intimidate would-be dissenters.
  • Lowell (26:10):

    "They have said, we don't care if we win our cases, we're going to name and shame. ... That is itself unprecedented."

3. Defending “Targeted” Clients: Letitia James, Lisa Cook, Security-Cleared Officials (27:45–45:15)

• Categories of Clients
  • Journalists, fired public servants, those with revoked clearances, figures facing personal vendettas.
• Lisa Cook’s Federal Reserve Case (32:07–35:41)
  • Trump invoked Article II power and an intentionally dubious criminal referral to try to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook; Supreme Court appears poised to protect her, but may also expand presidential removal power for other agencies.
  • Lowell (34:17):

    "He has said, like Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, that 'for cause' means whatever I say it means whenever I say it means."

• Whistleblowers and Security Clearance Retaliation (41:23–43:21)
  • Revoking clearances as a tool of intimidation (Mark Zaid, Miles Taylor) is unique, with judges issuing injunctions but cases expected to reach the Supreme Court.
• Letitia James and the Perpetual Threat (43:31–45:15)
  • Administration repeatedly launches new, baseless investigations for the sake of harassment:
    • Lowell (43:56):

      "If you don't care if you win and if you keep investigating somebody over and over again ... it's wearing."

4. The Judiciary: New Dynamics & Prognosis (35:41–41:23)

• Jodi Kantor’s Question:
  • How have judges and judicial appointments changed?
• Lowell’s Assessment:
  • Political litmus tests pervade all levels, not just SCOTUS; trial court experience is rare, benches draw more from government (especially prosecutors) due to low public service salaries, and the judiciary is overall more conservative.
  • Nevertheless, some Trump and GOP-appointed judges have issued strong anti-Trump rulings, pushing back on executive overreach.
  • Lowell (39:34):

    "Some of the most vociferous of the opinions reigning him in have come from people that were appointed ... by even him in his first term."

• Reforms Needed:
  • End lifetime appointments or limit terms, improve pay for judges to attract broader talent, restore legal professionalism and a sense of mission beyond commerce.

5. The Administration’s Broader Strategy (45:15–47:43)

• Not mere whim; deliberate erosion
  • The Trump circle’s project is to “eradicate” institutional resistance—destroying the Republican Party as an internal check, politicizing courts, weakening the press and bar, dismantling the rule of law.
  • Lowell (45:30):

    "There is a thread. The thread looks like Pre World War II Italy ... This is not random."

• Historical Parallels
  • Methods echo authoritarian regimes: criminalizing dissent, institutionalizing loyalty, targeting legal and media infrastructures.

6. Looming Legal Battles and Systemic Risks (51:21–59:43)

• Trump’s Lawsuits Against the Government (IRS, DOJ)
  • Raises the paradox of the president suing the government he runs, with the danger of “suing himself” and settling with public money.
  • Lowell (51:57):

    "This would be like ... if I was the person who slipped on my own sidewalk and I was going to sue myself ... and I would make a deal with my left hand taking money out of my pocket and giving it to my right hand from my other pocket."

• Election Interference and Federal Overreach
  • Raids on voting records and talk of nationalizing elections serve to intimidate local officials and suggest willingness to circumvent constitutional controls.
  • Local officials must be legally educated, fiercely defend their prerogatives, and trust courts as the last line of defense.
• Moving from Defense to Offense
  • Lowell’s firm is seeking proactive, offensive legal strategies (e.g., declaratory judgments for state officials, use of Federal Tort Claims Act) to preempt administrative abuses rather than merely react.
  • Lowell (56:46):

    "We have spent many weeks talking about offensive litigation instead of being completely defensive. ... Maybe there's one fewer mole than there was the day before."

7. Limited Presidential Immunity and the Role of State/Local Actors (58:57–59:43)

• Federal immunity is extensive, but not absolute
  • Presidential pardons and federal immunities cannot block state-level civil and criminal accountability. State attorneys general and local prosecutors are vital counterweights.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Legal Profession's Retreat
  • "Law firms stopped being professions and started being businesses. And that's not the way it should have been." — Abbe Lowell (04:09)
• On Chilling Press Freedom
  • "They have said, we don't care if we win our cases, we're going to name and shame. We're going to make it hard for people. ... That is itself unprecedented." — Lowell (26:10)
• On Unprecedented Judicial Pushback
  • "Some of the most vociferous of the opinions reigning him in have come from people that were appointed, by the way, by even him in his first term." — Lowell (39:34)
• On Coordinated Authoritarian Overreach
  • "There is a thread. The thread looks like Pre World War II Italy ... This is not random." — Lowell (45:30)
• On the Paradox of Trump Suing the Government
  • "This would be like ... if I was the person who slipped on my own sidewalk and I was going to sue myself ... and I would make a deal with my left hand taking money out of my pocket and giving it to my right hand from my other pocket." — Lowell (51:57)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:31–11:53 — Big law’s retreat from defending Trump’s opponents; motives and consequences.
• 11:53–27:45 — The Don Lemon case: protest, arrest, governmental showmanship, legal and psychological impact.
• 32:07–35:41 — Lisa Cook’s firing and the Supreme Court’s view on Article II power.
• 35:47–41:23 — Judicial appointment transformations and institutional effects (Q&A with Jodi Kantor).
• 41:23–43:21 — The security clearance cases and their significance.
• 43:31–45:15 — Repeated investigations into Letitia James and the psychology of administrative harassment.
• 45:15–47:43 — Trump’s strategy: not chaos but deliberate institutional erosion.
• 51:21–52:52 — Trump’s suits against the government: legal and ethical paradoxes.
• 52:52–56:20 — Raids on voting records, election interference, and barriers for federal overreach.
• 56:46–58:35 — Offensive litigation and future defensive strategies.

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Final Notes

• The episode delivers a vivid, insider perspective on the erosion of legal and journalistic independence in the U.S. today—but also charts the spirited, if embattled, resistance.
• Both host and guest maintain a tone that balances outrage, urgency, dark humor, and resolve.
• The conversation concludes with a call to action for independent journalists and attorneys: flooding the zone is possible, and vital.
  • Lowell (60:01):

    "There are so many of us out there now. ... There are lots of people that are now flooding the zone to push back against the abuse of power."

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For anyone seeking a clear, detailed understanding of how legal and democratic guardrails are being tested—and defended—in the Trump era, this episode is indispensable listening.

Transcript

[Abby Lowell]

Every day something happens. If you had asked me a week ago how it's going, I wouldn't have known that I had to figure out a way to get Don Lemon out of jail the next day.

[Kara Swisher]

Hi, everyone from New York magazine and the Vox Media podcast network. This is on with Kara Swisher. And I'm Kara Swisher. President Trump makes no secret about having a long list of enemies. And for people targeted by his administration, there's one lawyer that everyone seems to have on speed dial, Abby Lowell. Lowell is a longtime Washington defense attorney who's represented both Republicans and Democrats during Trump's first term. He even provided legal counsel to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. But in the last year, Lowell has dedicated himself to representing people who've opposed the Trump administration. Clients like New York Attorney General Letitia James, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, Trump's former National Security adviser John Bolton, and now independent journalist Don Lemon. Here he is talking about Lemon's case on Ms. Now a few days ago.

[Abby Lowell]

This is an administration that's not just willing to trample on the Bill of Rights. They're eager to do it. It's a warning sign. And if we can't rely on those Bill of Rights to protect you and Don and others who give us the news or lawyers who come up and defend you when you do that, then we're in a lot more trouble than the average person believes.

[Kara Swisher]

I think it's really important to talk to someone like Abby, who I met a million years ago as a reporter for the Washington Post. And the idea of lawyers standing up to Trump is really important thing. And a lot of them have. But a lot of law firms have acquiesced and Abby has set out on his own. And what he's doing is critically important going forward as some of the big law firms more concerned with their money making Bend the knee. All right, let's go to my conversation with Abby Lowell. Our expert question comes from New York Times investigative reporter Jodi Kanter, who covers the Supreme Court. So stick around. This is a Monday.com ad, the same Monday.com designed for every team. The same Monday.com with built in AI scaling your work from day one. The same Monday.comwith an easy and intuitive setup. Go to Monday.com and try it for free.

[Abby Lowell]

This week on the gray area, we're talking about what unites us. We've kind of created a society now where really the monoculture is just football and Taylor Swift. Those are really the only things that are like that now. And I'm not being sarcastic. It really is the case. So what does that say about American culture? Listen to the gray area with me. Sean Illing. New episodes available everywhere.

[Kara Swisher]

Does the winter weather have you feeling tired, Antisocial?

[Abby Lowell]

Sad?

[Kara Swisher]

You may want to take a cue from our friends in Norway. Really. They tend to orient towards the things that they like about the season instead of just sort of seeing it as a time of year to endure. How to embrace the winter that's on the next. Explain it to me. New episodes every Sunday. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

It is on.

[Kara Swisher]

Abby Lowell, thanks for coming on.

[Abby Lowell]

On.

[Kara Swisher]

We've known each other for quite a while, hasn't it? For a long time we have.

[Abby Lowell]

And various iterations of our lives, which is nice.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I was at the Washington Post. Sad. Let's have a moment.

[Abby Lowell]

I know that's a bad day today, isn't it?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, today, yesterday, all the days. Jeff Bezos has owned it in the last couple of years, actually. Anyway, let's just get started in on it because you, you are sort of everywhere. And last year you left for people who don't know a partner position at Winston and Strawn, a prestigious law firm, to start your own office. It's partially dedicated to representing people targeted by this administration. Now, Winston and Straw was reportedly turning down cases defending clients targeted by the Trump administration. Talk a little bit why so many big firms are shying away from the fight and aren't willing to end up on Trump's retribution list. And why are you?

[Abby Lowell]

Let's talk about the big firm problem to start with. At some point over the last, you could name it 15, 20, 25 years, most big law firms have become more and more reliant on their corporate clients, whether it's for corporate work or even litigation work. If these corporate clients have, as they often will, the need to get permission, license something from a government entity, be it the Federal Trade Commission, the securities and Exchange Commission, then their clients who fuel their revenue are going to say, don't make waves. And if a firm is dedicated, or at least they think they're dedicated solely to the bottom line and their majority of their clients are telling them, you've got to keep a low profile. That's the thing that's motivating these firms the most. It's unfortunate because it basically reflects that over the last 25, 30, 40 years, law firms stopped being professions and started being businesses. And that's not the way it should have been. And it's even not the way the founders envisioned it when our country began.

[Kara Swisher]

Why Is it different now? Because that's people being currying favor with corporations. Seems normal. And having to deal with the government. Right. This is not a new thing. What shifted, like, and I'll note, the head of Paul Weiss, the chairman, Brad Karp, just resigned because he was implicated in the Epstein files. Being close to him. I'm not sure they did anything else, just to be clear. But talk a little bit about that dynamic and why it changed with the Trump administration.

[Abby Lowell]

Yeah. Okay, so there's two parts to this equation. There was a time where firms like Paul Weiss was known as a litigation firm. They would have institutional clients, but mostly people hired them to do their battles one at a time. You might represent a client once and never see them again. When you start getting institutional clients for whom you are both asking for and getting business on both sides, the litigation and the business side, that's where the business side gets to predominate and says, we need this license. We need this permission. Don't make waves. But more than 50% of the equation, Kara, is not on the law firm side. It's on the government side. It's that in the history of our country, there's never been a president or those carrying out his commands that that will do what these law firms are afraid of, that will say, I am not approving your merger, Disney or whoever, because if you are criticizing me, I'm using my power as a weapon. And therefore, you better watch out what you say and what you do. This is the combination. Firms are more and more worried about the bottom line, driven by their corporate clients. And corporate clients are afraid of going against the government. And the government is willing to use its power to stifle speech, to stifle freedom, to basically stifle all the things guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. That's the storm that's created this moment.

[Kara Swisher]

And this is what pushed you out of becoming independent. Yes, but I have benefits and negatives for you. You obviously have freedom. I don't work for big news companies because of this similar thing. I was, like, tired of listening to them, essentially.

[Abby Lowell]

Okay. So in my career, I have always challenged the overreach of administrations all the way back to Ronald Reagan's, where I sued the Federal Aviation Administration on behalf of the localities in Washington when they wanted to change the flight paths at National Airport. I mean, the difference between my career up until 2025 and 2025 is that the government might overreach a couple of times a year, and then you would represent your clients. Right now, the government overreaches A couple of times a week. And so there's many more things to be done. So that's the reason that I would be in a position when the moment came to try to meet that moment, because it's why I became a lawyer to begin with. Now, with that background, I can tell you about 2025. In the beginning of 2025, as it would have been in any other year, various clients came and asked if I could help. The first was the FBI agents who did not want Donald Trump to reveal their identities for those who had worked on the January 6th investigations. And this was at a time that lawyers were beginning to be pressured by the Trump administration. Some law firms were beginning to make deals. And so my law firm said, that's not one we think we can do. All right, that was one. Shortly thereafter, I got contacted by a friend who worked for the USAID workers that had been stranded abroad. If you remember, when that agency was taken down, many people were left literally stranded. Yeah. And again, the intake committee said, we don't want to ruffle the feathers on that one. And then there was another one in between. That doesn't matter. But the straw that broke the camel's back for me was when New York State Attorney General Letitia James called. She and I met two days later in her office. It was exactly what I do for a living to help people in her situation. And at that point, I knew the firm was going to not say yes, because, after all, Letitia James was the person who successfully sued and got a judgment for fraud against Donald Trump and his businesses. And so that was the moment that I told the firm this was not going to work. And over that weekend, that's where it happened.

[Kara Swisher]

So what is the downside? We all sit around and go, okay, this part, this part. What was the downside for you? Resources.

[Abby Lowell]

Well, yeah, the downside was on Friday, I decided to do this. I needed to write a letter on behalf of Attorney General James by Tuesday, and that meant between the weekend and Tuesday. The downside was I had to find my lawyer to incorporate me. I had to go find malpractice insurance. I had to design my own letterhead. I had to borrow office space. I had to do all the above in 72 hours, which normally law firms require their partners to give them notice and get out 30 days. I gave them less than three days. The downside was just the logistics of starting a new business in 2025America. Everything from finding space to finding colleagues to being able to get a computer. Remember when I left Winston and Strom that weekend, I was off their grid. My laptop turned into a brick, 45 boxes of files were left behind, and I left the building. And so that was the immediate challenge.

[Kara Swisher]

What was their reaction?

[Abby Lowell]

I don't think they were super surprised, given that there had been these events where I kept pressing them to do things. I think that was first. I think they were shocked that I said we had to do it in 36 hours, and it turned out to be like 48 hours. And I think ultimately, I mean, look, it was amicable in the way that I. And I understand. I understand what the big law firm's vulnerabilities are. I'm not happy about it. I don't agree with it. I think the law firms could have band together day one and said, we're not going in that direction.

[Kara Swisher]

Absolutely.

[Abby Lowell]

I think that was a lack of leadership across the board of lawyers in America. I understand it, but I don't agree with it. So I don't think they were shocked. And as I said, under the circumstances, it was amicable. Although I'm disappointed. I'm disappointed in them. I'm disappointed in lawyers across America. And I'll tell you where I'm really disappointed. You've heard that some law firms went and made deals, right? Okay, we get that. And we know that some, a handful, said, no, we're fighting back. What people aren't recognizing is that almost every big firm in America used to do this vast amount of what's called pro bono work for community agencies, social service agencies, nonprofits, whether it was in the immigration world or the women reproductive rights world, or the environmental world, or any other world in which lawyers did their work for free. What is not being well reported is that all those. Think about this. Let's say there are. I'm gonna make it up. Let's say there are 500 law firms in America, and let's say they all have 100 lawy. And let's say that each of those lawyers do 50 hours of pro bono work a year. Think about the tens of thousands of hours. And law firms have cut back on that. And that is a gap that has not been filled.

[Kara Swisher]

Right, Right. Let's talk about some of your cases recently so people get a sense of it. Don Lemon obviously was the most recent high profile case, representing the former CNN anchor, an independent journalist now who was arrested in late January. Before the arrest, Don was covering a group of protesters who entered city's church in St. Paul, Minnesota. One of the pastors there is an ICE official. Don said repeatedly that There as a journalist, nothing more. And I should note that Don is a friend of mine, and he's been on the show and on Pivot. So to start, can you walk us through the days leading up to the arrest? Because Lemon told Jimmy Kimmel, he even offered to turn himself in. And instead, he was very publicly arrested in a hotel in LA where he's getting ready to cover the Grammys. I thought he would get arrested. I wasn't so sure he thought he was gonna get arrested. But talk to me a little bit about this case.

[Abby Lowell]

So you'll remember, these events started on that Sunday, the 18th, where Don and others were in Minneapolis to cover the protests. There was this group that he got connected with that were heading to a protest. He's a journalist. He'll cover a group that's going to protest wherever they go. This group went to a church. He filmed it. He interviewed people there. The event happened. It was done. I think he was in Minneapolis for five or six hours.

[Jodi Cantor]

Yeah.

[Abby Lowell]

Almost immediately from the top down, being Attorney General Bondi and the Assistant Attorney General Dillon from the Civil Rights Division, and who else knows in the administration started not just saying that this was an outrage that people would walk into a house of worship and basically protest, but that Don and other journalists. There was one other independent named Georgia Fort that was. There were not just journalists, but they were activists doing it, and they said they need to be arrested, they need to be charged. So Don and I were connected. As soon as that happened, it was probably the very day, and I started understanding what was going on. And the very first thing I did was I wrote Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who I've known in practice for years. And I said to him, in words and effect, I want you to know, Todd, I represent Don Lemon. I understand you're investigating, or at least that's what's being announced. If you are, you should be in contact. We should do this the right way. There's no reason to do it in an extraordinary way to make a public spectacle of it. Let us know what you're doing, and I'll make arrangements. I have done that dozens of times in my career. And especially if you're not representing somebody who's, for example, a real flight risk or somebody who is being accused of being a serial killer, they normally will let you do that. Right. Unless they're trying to make a show of it. And what we know about this administration is show first, substance second, if at all. And so I never heard back from Todd. Then the awful events in Minneapolis, you know, happened again in the killing of Alex Preddy. And I don't know that I thought that them going after Don Lemon was their highest priority.

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Abby Lowell]

I should have known better. Because what we know about this administration is they're very good at basically saying, if this is my right hand, pay attention to it while I do something with my left. They are the administration of distraction. So, again, I wasn't terribly concerned. And you said you had a premonition.

[Kara Swisher]

I just was like, there was enough there. Like, I just had heard from some lawyers. It was like he got real close, you know, And I was like, did he? You know, I mean. But that's all they needed. That's all I needed. I'm saying is I didn't. I thought they would do it.

[Abby Lowell]

Well, yeah, they don't have a proper basis to have done this. But then the outrage gets even more right. Not only did they ignore my normal request, let's not make a spectacle of this. Don goes out to Los Angeles to cover the Grammys. He's on an event before the. The two days before, and he's coming back into his hotel, and not one, not two, but a bevy of agents surround him in an elevator and basically arrest him and take him out. And they do that at 11:30 at night, not because there's somebody sticking around for him to be processed for the exact opposite reason. So that he'll have to spend a night in jail.

[Kara Swisher]

Correct.

[Abby Lowell]

So that's what happened. He was incommunicado. We knew from his husband that it had happened. We were immediately in touch with people in LA to start the process of knowing that he wouldn't be presented in front of a judge until later that next day, which happened. And we did get him out. But that was. Look at it. That was all for show. It was all because that's what they do.

[Kara Swisher]

Absolutely. So Attorney General Pambani actually took credit for the arrest, as well as other arrests of two protesters and another journalist. The church Georgia Ford Bondi claimed on X that the arrests happened at her personal direction. I'm in charge here, I guess. And the White House celebrated his own post on social media with chains and his picture. Lemons, lemonade, whatever stupid joke they were telling. Talk about the significance of that. That the nation's top law enforcement officials claiming she directed the arrest of these people. And the White House gloating. I've never seen anything like that.

[Abby Lowell]

Well, yeah, but, I mean, Kara, every day we wake up, and by the end of the day, some will say some sentence that sounds like, quote, we've never seen anything like this.

[Kara Swisher]

I was just trying to stop myself.

[Abby Lowell]

I tell all my friends and my journalists who work with words. I need a new word. I need a new word for unprecedented, crazy, outrageous, ridiculous. All right, put that aside. As to your specific question, I've said that as to Don. What this means is a terrible, terrible set of events. I mean, you imagine being rousted that way and put in a car and driven off to a location. So that's itself traumatic enough.

[Kara Swisher]

And also, Georgia Fort was in her home with her children. There was, like, 12 of them.

[Abby Lowell]

Yeah. And I've seen the video. It's just terrific. Right? So let's talk about the two things we talked about. You mentioned lawyers, and now we mentioned journalists. Let me get on my soapbox.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay?

[Abby Lowell]

Everybody in America knows that our founders came up with this amazingly brilliant system of what we call checks and balances, where we have three co. Equal branches of government that are supposed to rein in the other branches. That was the heavy duty lift. But they were smarter than that, and they understood deeply that there were two other institutions that would ensure the rule of law. One were lawyers and the other were journalists. It's not a mistake that in those first 10 bill of rights, two of them address freedom of press and the ability to have a lawyer of your choice. That said, when this administration was planning their return, it's not random, it's not ad hoc, and it's not an outlier. That their first attack, after they had already neutered the Congress and they had politicized the courts, was to go after the lawyers and to go after the journalists. I mean, talk to Ben Franklin, who understood the importance of a free press. And people forget that John Adams represented the British soldiers that were charged with murder in the Boston Massacre, got them acquitted, and then went on to be President of the United States.

[Kara Swisher]

Yep, Yep. Absolutely. But just for people to understand, a federal magistrate judge also declined to approve Lemon's arrest, and federal court appeals court declined to overrule that decision. So how unusual is it that they went ahead anyway and got the grand jury, which is very easy to do.

[Abby Lowell]

Well in this administration. It's not unusual at all, but people really ought to take your sentence and ponder it for another few seconds. They went to a magistrate, a federal magistrate, and said, give us arrest warrants for Georgia Ford and Don Lemon as well as others. The magistrate, not inexperienced, said, no, there's not probable cause here. They went to the district court judge who said, I am not in a position to overrule the magistrate. They then sort of secretly went to the court of appeals to order in a very unusual thing called a writ of mandamus, to order that to happen. And the 8th Circuit said, no, we're not doing that. As against that, they went to a grand jury of citizens. I'll come back to that in a second. And got the majority, of which a grand jury could be up to 23, but you need 12 of them to vote to vote for probable cause. The old expression in the law was prosecutors could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. I don't understand in Minneapolis, with all the publicity, how this grand jury was instructed on the facts and the law, we don't know. We don't know, but that's what we're going to try to find out first in this case. Now, on the other side of the coin, as I pointed out, we've been advising New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who got an indictment because President Trump put in one of his cronies to be the U.S. attorney when real prosecutors wouldn't take that case. And we got that indictment dismissed because of the way it was done was improper. They tried two other times to indict her in front of different grand juries in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and two grand juries told them no. That is itself unprecedented when they did it.

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Abby Lowell]

Presumably when they tried. But by the way, that's a moment in time. Kara, in my practice, I have never, ever been in a case where a federal prosecutor has asked a federal grand jury to return an indictment that had any merit, in which the grand jury said no.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, D.C. it's happened in D.C. so.

[Abby Lowell]

Far in various places. Yeah, True.

[Kara Swisher]

To play devil's advocate for a second, Lemon and others entered private property during a church service. He kept filming despite being asked to leave. And for the churchgoers, it was undoubtedly scary. Yes, the protesters were nonviolent, but places of worship have become targets of violence in this country many times. Times. How do you look at that when you. When you're pushing back against that?

[Abby Lowell]

So it's, it's so Trump administration, you know, and anybody who's paid attention to the news knows that folks on the right have been interrupting the services of LGBQ church services for a while, and I don't remember this administration arresting any of those journalists or any of those protesters as well. So we start with selectivity. This is the definition of selective prosecution for a political purpose. In terms of the government's theory of prosecution, it is that under the law under, let's say, the Face act, that the folks in the church had a right to be able to observe their civil rights of freedom of practice of religion, and you interfered with it. The problem is you're going to have two parts of the First Amendment that are combating each other, because in that same First Amendment is the right to free speech and the right to have the ability to perform your religion right. So where do those match? They match somewhere. There have been protests at churches and other houses of worship since the country has been founded. Does that mean it's illegal to do it? That's not the way that statute was passed. The statute was passed initially for the Ku Klux Klan that we're doing more than interrupting people's church services.

[Kara Swisher]

This is for people who don't know it's a conspiracy against rights law. It was enacted after. After the Civil War and designed to prevent groups like the Ku Klux Klan from intimidating people. The other law the government is using, again for listeners who don't know, is the Face Act, F, A, C, E, and is a 1994 law that's supposed to prevent people's access to abortion clinics and places of worship. This is what they're hanging it on. Presumably it is.

[Abby Lowell]

Now, I'm not saying that the protesters. Look, the judgment of people who are rightfully upset about what the government's doing in general and in Minnesota and Minneapolis in specific, certainly we understand why they would say, I'm going to the streets, I'm going to the courthouses. And if they really did believe that the minister at this church was somebody who was involved in the ICE raids, I'm not suggesting that was smart to do. I just haven't really thought about that through. What I do know is whatever this group did, what Don Lemon did that day was as the 30 year veteran journalist that he's always done. And it would be quite the opposite if you think about it. I always point out in the last week, you know, what was one of the turning moments in the civil rights movement during the 1960s, was that we had television cameras watching the brutality of those police officers in the south that were sicking their dogs and spraying fire hoses. If we didn't see that, I think we might not have been able to turn around the country's mood. We need the Don Lemons and we need the Georgia Forts and we need every journalist to be there on the front line because it can turn public opinion and it's embedded in the Constitution. It's why the First Amendment has freedom of the press in it.

[Kara Swisher]

Did his staying at least create a legal opening for the government? It was looking for anything. And months ago, I said, don, be very careful, because they're going to find a way to get to you. Like when he started as an, that was one of the first things I told him to get libel insurance, you know, a whole bunch of stuff when we were talking. And one of them was, they will find any opening. Just be careful. You have it sealed up.

[Abby Lowell]

Well, I mean, that's the point. I mean, you all in the journalist world and you've been both on various sides of it, it takes a degree of courage in a bad situation to be there. I mean, I don't see that the job that journalists do in this regard is not in the same milieu as when we send journalists to cover wars abroad. They can get killed. Indeed they do. It's a sacrifice that journalists understand. So being on the front line, whether it's in the Ukraine or on the streets of Minneapolis, is part of what is supposed to happen. And does it put him in harm's way? It puts him in harm's way. Did I think if you had asked me, even, I don't know, a month ago, if somebody like Don Lemon is following a group of people that are going from place to place in Minneapolis and is filming them and interviewing them, would he ever be arrested for doing that? Even though I think there's nothing off the table for this administration, that would have been a moment too far.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, absolutely. And even if you and Lemon ultimately win here, how does the mirror act?

[Abby Lowell]

No, no, no. Don't say if. Say when.

[Kara Swisher]

When. When. When. Okay, I'm sorry. Okay. When Ewan Lemon, ultimately, Lynn here. Or it could be dropped. That's the other way to go. How does the mere act of bringing a case like this against journalists erode press? Frieden. I'll point to investigative journalist Roan Nifero, who also has a legal degree, had a really excellent thread on social media about how. How both Republicans and Democrats are responsible for eroding those protections of news gathering. He says it's part of a trend common is administration's use of the Espionage act to charge people who shared classified information. But Farrow also wrote, quote, when governments begin criminalizing the observation of dissent using technical oversteps as justification, it's often a warning sign.

[Abby Lowell]

No, well, look, this administration. I don't know if this is a silver lining, but it's a characteristic of this administration. They often tell you right up front what they're doing, and it Also helps us to defend. They have said, we don't care if we win our cases, we're going to name and shame. We're going to make it hard for people. They're going to have to hire lawyers, they're going to have to take time out of their careers. We're going to put them in a position where they're on their heels. That is itself unprecedented. I mean, you know, decade after decade of attorneys general have made it clear the point of what prosecutors jobs are, and it isn't that. So you start there if that's their goal, which is, I don't care if I win. I just want to create havoc that erodes the protections. Whether you're a journalist, whether you're a defendant who has had political retribution against you because of what you've said or done, that erodes at the outset. Now, having said that, we're pushing back. I mean, you have judges that are throwing cases out, grand juries that are rejecting. It still means that people have had to find their lawyer and take time out of their career.

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Abby Lowell]

And as to Don, I think it has woken up. There are two things that happened in Minnesota in the last few weeks that could very well be a tipping point. One is the tragedies of U.S. federal agents killing people on the streets for peaceful protesting. And the second is these arrests of at least these two journalists because it basically has shown the world how far this administration is willing to go. And I don't know, maybe it's. Maybe it's a Selma, Alabama moment or Pettus Bridge moment. I don't know that yet, but it could be.

[Kara Swisher]

We'll be back in a minute. Support for this show comes from Quo. One phone call is all it takes to bring new opportunities. So if you're missing calls to your business, you could be missing out. Quo, spelled Q U O, helps you make sure you stay on top of things and helps you never miss a call again. More than 90,000 businesses rely on Quo to stay connected, professional and consistently reachable. Your entire team can handle calls and texts from one shared number. No more missed messages or disconnected conversations. Everyone sees the full thread, making replies faster and customers feel genuinely cared for. Quo isn't just a phone system. It's a smart system. Its AI automatically logs calls, generates summaries, and highlights next steps so nothing gets lost. It can even respond after hours so your business stays responsive even when you're not around. Ko can help you deliver a more personal experience and stay connected to your customers. Make this the year where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try quo for free plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com kara that's q u-o.com kara quo no missed calls, no missed customers. Support for this show comes from Servil AI if you run a business, you know how important your IT department is, but you also know they are always inundated with tasks. Most of their time is wasted working on password resets, accessing requests and onboarding. And the more your business grows, the more these requests pile up. But with Serval, they say they can cut about 80% of your help desk tickets and they can help free up your team to focus on more meaningful work. Unlike other legacy players, Serval was built for AI agents from the ground up. Servil AI writes automation in seconds. Your IT team can just assign describes what they need in plain English and Serval generates production ready automations instantly. Plus Servil guarantees 50% help desk automation by week four of your free pilot. But try it now because pilots are limited. Servil powers the fastest growing companies in the world like Perplexity, Mercor, Verkada and Clay. Get your team out of the help desk and back to work. They enjoy. Book your free [e-mail] Cara that's S E R V A L. Support for this show comes from IQ Bar. If you're looking for a smarter snack choice this year, the protein bars from IQ Bar offer clean, delicious ingredients that can help keep you physically and mentally fit. IQ Bar says all their products are clean label certified entirely free of gluten, dairy, soy, GMOs and artificial ingredients. Not to mention imagine packed with brain boosting ingredients like magnesium, lion's mane and more. IQ Bar doesn't just offer protein bars, though. Committed to getting to the gym more this year, you can rehydrate after your workout with IQ Mix, a zero sugar drink mix that hydrates with electrolytes meant to improve mood and boost clarity. You can even change up your morning routine with IQ Joe, a mushroom coffee designed for mental clarity that's packed with 200 milligrams grams of natural caffeine. Plus it comes in four different flavors that IQ Bar says are better than any brewed coffee. And right now IQ Bar is offering our special podcast listeners 20 off all IQ bar products, including the ultimate sampler pack plus free shipping. To get your 20 off, text Kara to 64,000. You can text Karakara to 64,000. That's Kara to 64,000. Message and data rates may apply. See Terms for details. So you have a lot of other politically targeted clients that fall into four broad categories. Journalists doing their job, people fired for doing their job, people whose security clearances were revoked so they can't do their job, and people against whom Trump has a personal vendetta, often, sometimes that reaches across all of them. You're representing these former FBI agents you reference and DOJ prosecutors who were fired and Trump is trying to find fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Her case is currently before the Supreme Court. The justices seem likely to let Cook keep her job while her case keeps playing out. But other cases involving members of independent agencies, they seem inclined to let the president do what he wants. Talk a little bit about the Cook case.

[Abby Lowell]

I'll talk about the Cook case in the context that you just said it. So for years, there has been this debate in the law about how far the power of Article 2, the executive branch's article is. If it says the president or the executive branch shall take care that the law be fulfilled, how far does that go? That was called the unified executive theory of law. And it's been debated for literally, I'm sure, two and a half decades, for sure. No administration has tried to press it like everything else this administration does, beyond its logic or its proper rationale. So they started eroding at various agencies. And when they fire people, sometimes the letters that go out say something like, pursuant to the president's power under Article 2, you are hereby fired. So they tried that with the Federal Trade Commission. They tried it with immigration judges. They've tried it with just the high level people of the FBI who were representing. That is their theory. It is true that we're in an era where this Supreme Court, having been chosen from those people who believe in this executive power, is predisposed to say the president should have more power than past Supreme Courts have said. That is the baseline. That's the starting point. What makes Governor Cook's case different is that the same Supreme Court, even as recently as the argument that occurred and that FTC case some weeks ago, has always said that the Federal Reserve Board is different. It comes from the time that it was its first national bank of the United States. It comes from that it's not an executive agency that does what the SEC does. It comes from its special role in America finances. And so that has been in the language of the court, court. And we've used that language to show the court that what the president did, which was, I am firing her because I want to. Now I have to explain this. And I think I can do it in just three sentences.

[Kara Swisher]

Sure.

[Abby Lowell]

I just pointed out Article two power. President did not use this Article two power to pretend to fire Lisa Cook. He concedes that he has to fire her under the phrase I am doing it for cause because that's what this statute says.

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Abby Lowell]

However, he has said, like Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, that for cause means whatever I say it means whenever I say what it means. And so for cause for him was having one of his stooges, one of his lieutenants, Bill Pulte, of a federal housing agency, create a baseless criminal referral to the DOJ, saying that Dr. Cook had somehow misrepresented on two different mortgages, which was her primary residence, and using that alone, which was conduct before she was a governor. That's the ground. He says that's quote, for cause. End quote. So the court is going to struggle with how much power for cause gives the President. We're pretty confident that they will say that whatever for cause means, it doesn't mean that that's what singular is different about her case. However, in the same period, we expect the court will decide the FTC Slaughter case.

[Kara Swisher]

This is Rebecca Slaughter. For people who don't.

[Abby Lowell]

I'm sorry, yes. And we'll do away with this precedent that was called Humphrey's Executor, which has been on the books for 100 years, that basically limits the President's power. We all think that have been following the court. That case is done. That will be in presidential power, the equivalent of Roe versus Wake up, meaning.

[Kara Swisher]

He'Ll be able to do fire who.

[Abby Lowell]

He wants in most of those agencies.

[Kara Swisher]

In most of those agencies, right?

[Abby Lowell]

Correct.

[Kara Swisher]

So while we're on the subject of the Supreme Court, every episode we get a question from an outside expert. Here's yours.

[Jodi Cantor]

Hi, there. This is Jodi Cantor from the New York Times. I'm an investigative reporter. My job is to illuminate the Supreme Court. And because of that, I would like to ask Abby Lowell about judges, and I'd like to take advantage of your long experience. An amazing thing about your career is that you've been practicing for a long time. Long time. How have judges changed generationally? Do they do their jobs in your observation, exactly the way they did 20, 30, 40 years ago? You've got some very sensitive cases connected to the Trump administration right now. What are your reasons for either confidence or lack of confidence in how the judges are going to be dealing with those cases? Thank you.

[Abby Lowell]

Okay, so, Jodi, first I'm going to go past your Reference to how long I've been practicing age.

[Kara Swisher]

I know. She called us all Abby.

[Abby Lowell]

I know. Really? Will you talk to her offline about that?

[Kara Swisher]

I will.

[Abby Lowell]

All right, good. Secondly, to answer your question, this is a way I've tried to describe what I've seen over my years. There has, for the longest time, been some political and philosophical litmus tests to appoint Supreme Court justices. And you can trace that back for probably 30 years, maybe even longer, for sure. And so we were used to that. And we were also used to the Senate playing a role of making sure that at the edges, that didn't go too far. Everybody knows that Robert Bork didn't get the votes necessary when the Senate thought that was a little bit further than the court should ever go. And there were opposite such things. What didn't happen until the recent modern era was that litmus test. That political and philosophical litmus test didn't go to the lowest courts. We didn't see that phenomenon on who's gonna be at the trial court level. We used to have judges who had trial court experience to be trial court judges. Now that litmus test is what the political parties do at every level. So that's one phenomenon, Jodi, that's different about the judges also, because judges have stayed in the area of public servant salaries. The people who populate the judges positions are often from the government to start with, which also means that they're often from prosecutor's offices. You don't have a lot of people that are working at big law firms, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, giving up that to be in a lifetime appointment to be a judge. So you have that phenomenon. I mean, what do first year associates make on Wall Street? $300,000. I mean, that's nuts. So you have that phenomenon going through. So between the litmus test, the populating with judges, with people of your philosophy, the disparity in where we're getting judges from the benches are turning a little bit more conservative and sometimes way more conservative. That's what I've observed over the years. Having said that, since Donald Trump got into office, there's hundreds of lawsuits that have been filed against him. They thought their plan was to, what they call it, flood the zone. Lawyers have flooded the zone, and I think there have been over 150, maybe as many as 200 injunctions that have been issued at the trial level. Now, of course, some are getting reversed on appeal, and some of them will get to the Supreme Court, but not all of them will get to the Supreme Court. Yeah. So to be succinct about it, Jodi. First, we have the litmus test on all levels of judges. Second, we have the disparity from where judges come from, which will make them more conservative by bent. And third, we have an administration that's willing to press every legal issue in terms of the unitary executive to its farthest extent. And that would get you 20, 26.

[Kara Swisher]

But they are pushing back. A lot of judges are pushing back, even if they're conservative. Correct. You've seen that trend, which I think is a surprise to the Trump people.

[Abby Lowell]

Well, I mean, we've had some amazing opinions that are being issued by the most conservative judges on some of the courts of appeals that are basically saying we're not allowing the president to do what it is he wants to do. I don't know that. I think that there is a test that says that all the favorable opinions are coming from democratically appointed judges and all the unfavorable ones are coming from Republicans. I don't think that's the case. But I think it's a good sign that some of the most vociferous of the opinions reigning him in have come from people that were appointed, by the way, by even him in his first term.

[Kara Swisher]

Is there a way to change any of these things you're talking about?

[Abby Lowell]

This is what I would do. First, I would have all judges from the Supreme Court down to the district court level not be lifetime appointments. I think that's one of the things that happens is all These presidents appoint 40 year olds to be on the Supreme Court for 30 years. I mean, I would have 10 year terms or 12, perhaps tops. Second of all, on the district court and the court of appeals, I would do the same.

[Kara Swisher]

Same.

[Abby Lowell]

Next, I know that this is maybe different because every public servant should be paid a better wage. But if you want better judges and you want the best of law to go to those, you're going to have to figure out a compensation system that doesn't put them at such a disadvantage to everybody else. That's the second reason. And third, just like in the law firms where we started talking about this, people have to remember why people should be lawyers. People have to remember that this wasn't supposed to be a business at all times. It's supposed to be part of the cause that represents and protects the rule of law. So those would be three things that would make a difference. One of the things that's good about what's going on now is that I think applications to law schools are up and I'm Hoping that that's the case, because people are saying, wait, this is a moment where lawyers can do their job.

[Kara Swisher]

So let's get back to your clients, Mark Zaid and Miles Taylor, two others, they had their security clearances revoked, which people who don't live in Washington. That's a big deal. These cases tend to fly under the radar and everything else the Trump administration is doing. Talk about why they're worth paying attention to. This is sort of oxygen for many people like them.

[Abby Lowell]

All right, so to operate in Washington, when you're a whistleblower lawyer like Mark Zaid, when you are somebody who operates outside as a government contractor, or when you are in government like Miles Taylor was, you need as I have to have a security clearance. I have to have one to represent people like this. And security clearances are uniquely vested in the executive branch to decide who gets it on criteria for which they get a lot of discretion. However, when the president makes clear that I'm revoking your clearance because I don't like that you sued me, or I am invoking it because of something called the national interest and not because you're a security threat, or does it because they said, I don't like what you wrote about me, then you provide a window to challenge that. And so he did a remarkable series of things among all the remarkable things. First of all, back in the spring, you remember, he revoked the security clearance of lawyers in entire law firms and tech companies.

[Kara Swisher]

They did that to Chris Krebs company.

[Abby Lowell]

Right. And they did it to Miles, who was his own. So in terms of that, remember that the district court judges who heard that prevented it issued an injunction to restore or to prevent the suspension of those large law firms. In the case of my friend and client, Mark Zaid, who's an individual, he not only had his security clearance suspended, it was actually revoked. And remember, Mark's offense was that he represented one of the people that was involved in coming forward as a whistleblower that caused the impeachment of Trump over the Ukraine phone call. And so we also challenged that in court. The judge enjoined that from happening. And on all these cases, the government has now taken appeal to the the next level of court.

[Kara Swisher]

So that's where we sit, right?

[Abby Lowell]

That's where we sit on all of them.

[Kara Swisher]

Where do you expect it to end?

[Abby Lowell]

At the Supreme Court?

[Kara Swisher]

At the Supreme Court.

[Abby Lowell]

I mean, some place, one of these cases will go to the Supreme Court.

[Kara Swisher]

So you're also representing, I said, people who Trump wanted to target, and we've talked about New York Attorney General Letitia James. As you mentioned earlier, the administration's repeatedly gone after James. So far has not succeeded. What extent those failures mask the long term threats because the administration doesn't feel like it's going to stop. And federal prosecutors have reportedly launch a new investigation into James and her hairdresser.

[Abby Lowell]

I think the answer to that is similar to your question to me about its impact on the First Amendment and on free journalists. So if you don't care if you win and if you keep investigating somebody over and over again, today it's about the mortgage, tomorrow it's about your hairdresser, after that it could be about your parking ticket, then it's wearing. Luckily, though, there's the ability of somebody who's as, as dedicated and courageous as Letitia James not to be coward, not to be fearful, but to keep fighting back. But does it have an impact? Of course it has an impact. It has an impact when the President of the United States on more than three, four dozen occasions can say, I want to go after Letitia James. Now, the motion that never got heard in our case because we won on an earlier motion was the motion in which we put forward the concept of what's called prosecutorial vindictiveness. And if there is never a better example than the president demanding that she get charged, that's a great example. So does it have an impact? Does it erode? It does. If there's a silver lining, and it is there, it's just a thin silver lining to what's been happening is that we are able to show the motives of this administration and on many, if not a majority of occasions, we are winning.

[Kara Swisher]

What is the common thread in all of these cases? There's a broader strategy, presumably beyond catering to his whims. Apparently if he says it three times, they have to do it, whatever, he'll be gone at some point. But it may be just catering to the king. I don't know.

[Abby Lowell]

No, no, no, no. There's, I'm afraid, unfortunately, I don't think these are ad hoc things. I think there is no, I think this group of people who were out of power for the four years of the Biden administration and hoped that Donald Trump would return, who authored Project 2025 and did other things, knew that if they got back in power this moment, it occurred and it is deliberate. It is. What have they done? They have basically eradicated the Republican Party. It's the Trump Party. There's nobody on the Republican side in the United States Congress. With very rare example that does their job. They have politicized the courts and have basically detracted Americans confidence in the court system. They have attacked the lawyers, they have attacked the journalists. There is a thread. The thread looks like Pre World War II Italy. The thread looks like other parts of the country. I could say it this way. Let's say it was four months ago, maybe even a better year ago. And I said, okay, name the city and the country that basically took lawyers out of the game by taking away their security clearances and made them cowards and decide not to take cases. That they basically told the press that if you ever report against me, we're going to put you out of business and I'm gonna sue you for defamation. So they stopped doing it. If I said to you that they were going to shoot peaceful protesters in the streets, would you say us, or would you say Russia, Moscow, Iran or other places? This is not random. Everybody ought to know that there are people who believe the time has come to take this power back from the people, from the institutions. To what end? I don't know. I can't quite figure out why the Stephen Millers and the Donald Trumps and the others who enable him think that when they're gone, they're going to leave a legacy that's going to survive. But they don't seem to care. And for the next two years, that's what we're dealing with.

[Kara Swisher]

I think keeping themselves in power is the end of itself and hatefulness. And Stephen Miller seems a really complex psychological figure in so many ways.

[Abby Lowell]

It is a complicated mess. So in order to decipher this, you need historians, you need lawyers, and you need a bunch of psychologists to figure it out.

[Kara Swisher]

We'll be back in a minute. Support for on with Kara Swisher comes from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Let's be clear, when the government starts enforcing religion, that's not morale, that's control. The First Amendment exists so no one gets to hard code their beliefs into the law. Not Silicon Valley, not Washington, not Christian nationalists. The Freedom From Religion foundation is one of the few organizations that's working towards actually enforcing that boundary in courts, in schools, and in state houses. And they say this is about power, not piety, and that when government and religion merge, power always wins. If you care about your personal freedom, real equality, and keeping the state out of your conscience, it's time to support them. Visit FFRF US New Year or text my name Kara K A R A to 511-511 to learn more or to join, text Kara to 511-511 or go to FFRF US NewYear. That's Kara to 511-511 and help protect a country that belongs to all of of us. Tax fees may apply. Support for this show comes from Deleteme. These days it's easier than ever for bad actors to get your information and exploit it. The good news is there's Deleteme. I've tried Deleteme many times. I use it all the time and I think it's a really great service. It helps you find out what information is about you out there and how it's being collated by data brokers, most of whom do not have your best interest interests in mind. One of the things I'm always surprised about is how much bad information there is about me mixed with good information and about how they know everywhere I've lived for the past 900 years. It's ridiculous, but it's also disturbing. Deleteme makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. With DeleteMe, you can protect your personal privacy and the privacy of your business from doxing attacks before sensitive information information can be exploited. The New York Times wirecutter is named Delete Me, their top pick for data removal services compared to the others out there. And I can attest to that. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20 off your Delete Me plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com Cara and use the promo code CARA at checkout. The only way to get 20 off is to go to join Delete. Join DeleteMe.com Kara and enter the code Kara at checkout. That's K A R A. That's joindeleteme.com Kara CodeCara.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

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[Kara Swisher]

So let's end by looking at some of the big legal challenges in the next few months or years. First, there's Trump's decision to sue the IRS for $10 billion over the leaking of his tax records in 2020. Now, Trump likely does have a legitimate claim against the irs, but the sum is absurd, and it's a massive conflict of interest. Before he won reelection, he also sued the DOJ for $230 million, and that case is ongoing. What's to stop the government from settling with him? He is the government. How does that work?

[Abby Lowell]

Yeah, this is unprecedented for even somebody like me or Jody or somebody to opine, right?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Abby Lowell]

So this is great. This would be like in our average lives, if I was the person who slipped on my own sidewalk and I was going to sue myself for my negligence, and I would make a deal with my left hand taking money out of my pocket and giving it to my right hand from my other pocket.

[Kara Swisher]

That's exactly what I mean.

[Abby Lowell]

So, I mean, so I. I get the framework. This is what could stop it. First of all, all there is going to be people, entities who challenge the conflict, who point to the law that says that you can't be both the plaintiff and the defendant in the same case. And secondly, what can I tell you? Hopefully, there are judges out there who realize just how awful this would be if we allow him to sue himself for $10 billion and then settle the case for five or sue for 230 and command Pam Bondi. Okay, I'll drop the case. Pay me 100 million million. It's just beyond your comprehension, right?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll see. Another major story is the FBI's seizure of 2020 voting records in Fulton County, Georgia, which includes most of Atlanta. Days before the raid, Trump said, quote, people will soon be prosecuted for what they did. The president's claims of voter fraud in Georgia that year have been repeatedly disproven. But with the midterms later in the year, a lot of people are very worried. What kind of ripple effects could this raid have going forward? And what does it signal to local election officials on the ground? Besides, sides be scared? Presumably, that's the goal here.

[Abby Lowell]

Well, you earlier in our conversation pointed out their desire to hold on to power. Okay. What I think I go around and people are equally fearful of, other than being shot in the streets for protesting, is that somehow people think Trump is going to steal the 2026 election or the 2028 election, or he's going to make sure that it doesn't happen at all.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, every accusation is a confession with these people. So not an unusual thing to think.

[Abby Lowell]

But go ahead and you start seeing some of the things. Right. Yesterday or the day before, he says, I want to nationalize elections.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Abby Lowell]

I mean, he just makes up a phrase that even people in his own party say, no, no, no, you can't do that.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. The Constitution, for people don't know, gives state the power to carry out elections.

[Abby Lowell]

There were people who said, you can't knock down half of the White House either, which he seemed to be able to do. So you can't put it past him to find a way to nationalize the elections or put National Guards around people's voting booths so that people are intimidated to come and vote. People should be rightfully concerned about that and using the power of the government to go after a debunked theory of fraud in the 2020 election. He's not even doing it about something that happened yesterday. He's saying he's doing it to continue his hoax, that the election of 2020 was stolen from him and sends the FBI and others to a voting center in Fulton county to grab the ballots. That is an omen about what could happen in other places that he has been yelling about. One of the reasons he said on tv, I think he wants to nationalize. He said there's corruption in Philadelphia, in Atlanta. I forgot the names of the cities. So if I were the election officials in those places, I would basically start locking up your ballots or at least putting lawyers in the way from when they try.

[Kara Swisher]

Now, how could he use the legal system and power of the Justice Department to try to take over elections? Because it's very explicit in the Constitution.

[Abby Lowell]

I think he says it, and now his minions are going back to the room to figure out how could we do that if we wanted to? So I don't know the answer. And by the way, let you and I make a deal that if you're a smart person and I try to be a smart person, let's not come up with a way he could do it so that he could use that.

[Kara Swisher]

That's correct. Good point. Fair point.

[Abby Lowell]

Point. Let's let him figure it out the wrong way so that it could be successfully attacked when he tries.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay. And you said election officials should lock out ballots that can they do that? And even in the face of a federal warrant.

[Abby Lowell]

Well, yeah. I mean, I think the thing is, is that you Bring what you can, right? If they seize things, you can make a motion to unseize things. If they subpoena things, you can move to quash the subpoena.

[Kara Swisher]

Right?

[Abby Lowell]

If they come in without a subpoena or without a search warrant, election officials all over the country need to know their rights. You don't have to talk to any of these folks, and you don't have to give them anything without a court order. And what does that mean? Just like I'm trying to figure out why somebody would be indicted for being a journalist in Minneapolis. Magistrates and judges are a frontline protection for the overreach of the executive branch. They have to rise to the occasion and not let it happen.

[Kara Swisher]

There's a very good argument of get off my lawn. Get off my lawn. Get off my lawn now. So in an interview back in August, you said, one of the things you're doing at your firm is not waiting for the next bad thing to happen, but knowing that it's coming. I think about this a lot. I'm like, they're so good at getting to set the agenda with reaction rather than action. So how do you anticipate what the Trump administration is gonna do next, and what are the big fights you are gearing up for right now?

[Abby Lowell]

Well, without tipping our hand about some of the things that are being worked on down the hallway from me right now, we have spent many weeks talking about offensive litigation instead of being completely defensive. I always tell people that when people say, like, when you get down, what would make you down? I say, well, sometimes I feel like I'm at the carnival game of whack a mole. You know, we hit one of them down and another one comes up. The good news is that maybe there's one fewer mole than there was the day before. Having said that. So we know his game plan. We now know that he's seeking to intimidate people in the elections world. So there will be possibility of bringing suits that will define by declaratory judgment what the rights of these state and local officials are that can't be nationalized. There are, we know, his aggrandizement for things and property, whether it be the new arch over the Memorial Bridge, whether it be knocking down the East Wing. He's talked about wanting to take over the D.C. public health courses. We now know where he's going. And there can be those suits that are brought offensively to tell him that he's outside the bounds of whatever statute or no statute he believes he is going to do when his people take Actions like shooting and killing people on the streets. Sure, they've got a certain amount of immunity, and I guess this is reactive. But nobody is using the Federal Tort Claims act as much as it will be being used now in the future to address those. So there are offenses that can be done. Again, the system was created to give a presumption of regularity to the government doing its job. And in a sane and rational moment, that immunity makes sense. The problem with the system is that it envisioned that we would live in sane and rational moments. So we're now trying to figure out the solution.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, a lot of Trump people, they're asking for immunity right now or soon, like, more immunity from him directly. And I was like, why? Did you do anything? And they're like, no. But I was like, well, you're going to jail if you did. I'm guessing in the future, but if you didn't, possibly not. So how do you get to them if they get that immunity, the ones that actually did wrong things?

[Abby Lowell]

Okay, so what the President can do, as he has done over and over in this administration, which is a story unto itself, is the buying pardons, the buying commutations. He can immunize under federal statutes, lots of things. What he can't do is immunize people from civil liability, except for narrow circumstances of what the statutes allow. And what has been one of the best parts of the last year, if you're looking for, again, a silver lining, the rise of state attorneys general to meet the moment to use the powers of state law or local prosecutors who are also banning together, because the president can't immunize his actors from those two forms of liability. So that's also a place where people can be a little hopeful, helpful in.

[Kara Swisher]

The future, going in the future, in.

[Abby Lowell]

In the future.

[Kara Swisher]

So Kristi Noem better not go to Minnesota anytime after 2028 or a couple.

[Abby Lowell]

Of the other places where we have these state prosecutors say not, you know, not in my backyard.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. Okay. Abby, this is so fascinating, so substantive. I really appreciate it. And the work you're doing is really, I mean, to me, God's work.

[Abby Lowell]

Well, thank you for having me. And I want to say before we end that I'm not alone. There are so many of us out there now. Yeah. We may not be in the biggest firms that you've heard the names of over the last decade, but there are lots of people that are now flooding the zone to push back against the abuse of power. It gives me courage every day.

[Kara Swisher]

Same thing in journalism. Every day, more and more independent journalists.

[Abby Lowell]

Good for you guys.

[Kara Swisher]

Let me tell you everybody, the water's fine, so jump in. Today's show was produced by Christian Castro Sel, Michelle Aloy, Megan Burney, and Kaitlyn Lynch. Nishat Kuru is Vox Media's executive producer of Podcast. Special thanks to Eamon Whalen and Madeline laplante Dubie. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following this show, you're standing up to Donald Trump. If not, watch out for Pam Bondi and her Goon Squad. Go Wherever you listen to podcasts, search for on with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to on with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.