Hunter Biden’s Lawyer Abbe Lowell on the Biden Case, his own career, and the legal challenges that could undermine the 2024 Presidential Election

By Claudia Amendoeira

SPJ New England correspondents for Student News Live

On election day, Hunter Biden’s Lawyer Abbe Lowell sits down to discuss the politicization surrounding Hunter Biden’s court case, his experience defending clients on both sides of the political aisle, and the legal challenges he anticipates in the weeks ahead.

Amendoeira: Last year you accused prosecutors of “bowing to Republican pressure” while charging Mr. Hunter Biden. How do you believe the controversial nature of this year’s election has politicized Mr. Hunter Biden’s case?

Mr. Lowell: This didn’t start precisely during the election year, but the Republican interference with the investigation and the prosecution procedure—and in a very deliberate way, all the way back to when Hunter’s father was running. They decided that they could use Hunter, who in his life has, like all of us, made various mistakes, as a way to come after his father and try to embarrass and weaken and create controversy, even if it meant that they could create lies and falsehoods. So it wasn’t something that started in 2023 or 2022, it started in 2019—and what is very clear is that they succeeded. 

By that I mean there was an investigation of great depth and thoroughness, and at the end of an almost five year investigation, the people that were the career non-political prosecutors and investigators decided that the right way to end the investigation against Hunter Biden was to work out an agreement in which there would not be any charges, and then there would be an ability of him to admit that he was addicted and deal with it and be involved in recovery, etc. Well, as soon as that became public, the political pressure of the Republican Party became intense, and the bottom line was that they put enough pressure that ended up undoing that deal and causing him to be charged in two different cases, two different states, with both felonies and misdemeanors. 

And the only thing that changed between the time that the career prosecutors made the agreement and when the charges were brought were not that there was any new evidence—there wasn’t. It wasn’t that the law in the United States changed because it didn’t—if anything, it got more favorable to people like Mr. Biden. The only thing that changed was the political pressure. It started before, and it’s continued, and bizarrely, even when President Biden announced that he was not running for re-election, and we were ahead in the summer looking at things, President Trump—former President Trump, hopefully never again President Trump—continued to post things on the social media networks demanding prosecution of Hunter Biden. They found this to be something useful. Now, whether it moved one single vote, or whether it changed anything in the politics, I don’t know. But it was a very deliberate effort, and it continues to be so even as to a few weeks ago.

Amendoeira: You touched upon this a little already but I want to go back to it—you don’t believe President Biden’s removal from the race eased the scrutiny of Mr. Biden’s case?  

Mr. Lowell: The forces were already in motion. I mean the cases had already been brought, the prices had already been prosecuted. It wasn’t as if the day that the President announced he wasn’t running, everybody said: “Okay, let’s now dismiss all the cases, because that’s what we want to do.” 

And the other thing is that even in the summer, the Republicans in Congress that have the majority in the House of Representatives continued to issue releases and reports accusing President Biden and his son of wrongdoing, so it had no impact. Even the former president talked about Hunter Biden at the Republican Convention. I mean, it was crazy.

Amendoeira: Could you give me a specific example of when allies of Former President Trump manipulated the case for their own political purposes? 

Mr. Lowell: I can do it in a general way. While he was in office, the evidence is clear that President Trump directed his Justice Department to begin an investigation of Hunter and his father. When he was in office, there’s quite a lot of evidence that indicates that he asked his own personal lawyer, a man named Rudy Giuliani, to go to Europe and start gathering evidence that would allege some wrongdoing in Ukraine between the Biden family and people in Ukraine. President Trump was the one who was screaming that when a deal had been made, went on social media and said: “this deal was the worst deal in American history. It was chapter and verse about things that he did to interfere with the investigation and to egg it on.

Amendoeira: Do you believe the outcome of this election will have any impact on Mr. Biden’s court case? 

Mr. Lowell:  No, I don’t think at this stage what happens today in the election or tomorrow—whenever we know the results—will have any impact on either the current cases that still remain to be sentenced or determined that concern Hunter Biden, nor will it have any impact on what the members of Congress did to continue the investigations in Congress because those are all done already. Whatever happens to Hunter at this point is going to happen outside the outcome of the election.

Amendoeira: How would you characterize the media’s efforts at covering this court case?

Mr. Lowell: I think mixed. I think like everything else in the United States there’s media that really is the media, and there’s media that really is just the mouthpiece for political factions. Media outlets like Fox News were responsible for continuing the falsehoods accusing President Biden and his family of wrongdoing, so they became part of the problem. And there wasn’t necessarily a counter-narrative from even the most democratic and liberal media outlets. primarily because to a lot of people, Hunter’s story doesn’t invoke any sympathy. It should, but they think of him as somebody who messed up, and so he didn’t engender a lot of sympathy when people were coming after him. He was a person born of some prestige and wealth, he had a good education, and like so many other people he ended up as an addict to something and he went down the rabbit hole. So he didn’t engender enough sympathy for when the people on the right were doing things for people to be screaming about it on the left. And I do think there have been some pockets of objective journalism where some media have revealed some of this, but mostly it’s been up to Hunter, his family, and his lawyers to get out there the truth of what happened, and we’re continuing to do it.

Amendoeira: Still on the topic of the media— Mr. Biden recently decided to revive his court case against Fox News. Why did he revive it and why now?

Mr. Lowell: It got initially dismissed because of a procedural issue having to do with what court it was put in. He was never a person to say “I’m not bringing this case because I don’t believe in it.” It had a lot to do with the procedural aspects. He revived it because they could fix the procedural issues and move on. And in the meantime, the Fox Network and News Corp did do some things to try to fix what they had done wrong, but it wasn’t enough. His removal of the case to begin with wasn’t his saying: “my case doesn’t have any merit,” it was, again, for legal procedural issues.

Amendoeira: You have previously represented members of the Trump Family and now you’re representing President Biden’s son. What prompted this change? 

Mr. Lowell: All my life, I have represented people who seek my advice in an area where I might have something to advise them on or some experience or something to give them, which is what lawyers do. I have never, ever, at the front door of my office, determined who I would represent by whether they were a Democrat or Republican. And all my life, in my cases, representing people of profile or public officials, I have represented a number of Republicans and a number of Democrats because that’s not a criterion that I employ to decide whether I can provide somebody with good advice.

It happens that in one of those iterations, it turned out that members of the Trump family and administration thought I had some experience that could offer them—as I said, I don’t pick my cases based on politics. Similarly, when it got to the point of Hunter needing counsel, it was in the same area of what I do: it was a criminal case, it was a congressional case, it was civil litigation, it was all the things that I have practiced. So if you don’t pay attention or it’s not a criterion as to who is a Democrat or who is a Republican, lawyers take their cases based on lots of things. Do I have any experience in the area? Do I know it? Can I provide good advice? Does the client have the ability, if it’s a paying client, to pay? All those things you consider, but it’s never like: “oh, I’m a lifelong Democrat, so I’ll only represent Democrats.” That’s not the way it works.

Amendoeira: Do you feel like being a legal counsel to Republicans in the past has now prepared you to go against them in court and outside court?

Mr. Lowell: It’s not that. It’s close to that, but you don’t have it quite right. I think what it is is that because I’ve had to deal with Republicans as clients and Republicans as adversaries, and I’ve had to deal with Democrats as clients and Democrats as adversaries, it hopefully gives me credibility on both sides. They know if I make a statement, it’s not because I’m doing it politically, but because I believe that that’s the right legal outcome. I think that helps. I think that’s the real lesson here.

Amendoeira: Speaking more broadly on these elections, what legal challenges do you envision arising in the aftermath of this week? What should we be looking out for?

Mr. Lowell: What we know is that we live in a time in the United States where people challenge election results even when they shouldn’t. And there at the end of the 2020 election I think 65 challenges that Trump and his people tried to put forward, and they failed on all 65 but it doesn’t mean that they didn’t try. So there are lawyers now standing by in all the states in the United States, being ready to either defend or challenge various results, and that litigation will happen for a little bit. This is not going to be over in a day or a week, so you can look for that, and hopefully all the battles will take place in courtrooms and not take place on the streets, as happened last time.

Amendoeira: Thank you very much Mr. Lowell.