YouSaid · the spoken record

Abbe Lowell

lines on the record: 68
first: 2026-02-09
most recent: 2026-02-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“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 decades, 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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's talked about wanting to take over the DC 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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yeah, I mean, I think the thing 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. Right. 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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think he says it, and now his minions are going back to the room to figure out how we could do that if we wanted to. 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. That's correct. Good point.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. 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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You start seeing some of the things, right? Yesterday or the day before, he says, I want to nationalize elections. I mean, he just makes up a phrase that even people in his own party say, no, no, no, you can't do that. Yeah.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I mean, so I get the framework. This is what could stop it. First of 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 a plaintiff and a 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. It's just beyond your comprehension, right?”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, this is unprecedented for even somebody like me or Jody or somebody to opine, right? Yeah. 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 for my other pocket.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ever report against me, we're going to put you out of business and I'm going to sue you for defamation so they stop doing it. If I said to you that they were going to shoot peaceful protesters in the streets, What would you say US, or would you say Russia?”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 cower and decide not to take cases. That they basically told the press that if you”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, no, no. 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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Zade, 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 next level of court.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so to operate in Washington when you're a whistleblower lawyer like Mark Zade, when you're 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 he 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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. 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 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 applicants”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, 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 have come from people that were appointed, by the way, by even him in his first term.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, to be succinct about it, Jody, 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 father's extent, and that would get you 2026.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Trial court judges. Now that litmus test is what the political parties do at every level. So that's one phenomenon, Jody, that's different about the judges. Also, because judges have stayed in the area of public servants' 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 at 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 are 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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 going to be at the trial court level. We used to have judges who had trial court experience to be trial.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm sorry, yes, and we'll do away with this precedent that was called Humphreys Executor, which has been on the books for 100 years that basically limits the president's power. We all think that I've been following the court. That case is done. That will be in presidential power the equivalent of Roe v. Wade.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is different about her case, however, in the same period we expect the court will decide the FTC slaughter case. This is Rebecca Slaughter.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fire her under the phrase I am doing it for cause because that's what this statute says. 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 Poulte 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...”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 branchic 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, you know, I'm sure, two and a half decades for sure. Yeah.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 a Selma, Alabama moment or Pettis Bridge moment. I don't know that yet, but it could be.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. And as to Don, I think it has woken up.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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, and 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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Lemmon did that day was as the 30-year veteran journalist that he's always done. It would be, 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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is. Now, I'm not saying that the protesters, 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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 were doing more than interrupting people's church services.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So 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 LGBTQ 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 or 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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Fort and Don Lemon as well as others. The magistrate not inexperienced said, no, that'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 A circuit said, no, we're not doing that.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 mention journalists. Let me get on my soapbox. 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 ten 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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yeah, but I mean, Kara, every day we wake up and by the end of the day, we'll say some sentence that sounds like, quote, we've never seen anything like this. Yes”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, 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 two days before, and he's coming back into his hotel, and not one and not two, but a bevy of agents around 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.”
2026-02-09 · On with Kara Swisher · Defending Trump’s ‘Enemies’ with Attorney Abbe Lowell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT