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Abbe Lowell Falls For Internet Prank, Still Gives Good Advice

Jared Kushner's attorney gives the world a lesson in cybersecurity 101.

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Abbe Lowell

If you’re a lawyer, and especially if you’ve a lawyer who has taken on a high profile role in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 election, you have to mind your Ps and Qs when it comes to cybersecurity, lest you fall for an internet prank or worse. That should be pretty obvious.

The latest case study comes from Norton Rose Fulbright partner, Abbe Lowell, who’s become a current events fixture due to his representation of Jared Kushner. Yes, Kushner has a J.D. from NYU, but he’s smart enough to know that he needs an expert like Lowell if he’s going to weather tropical storm Mueller heading right at him.

In any event, Lowell recently received an email from kushner.jared@mail.com asking his advice about dealing with… embarrassing emails sent to his personal email address from a White House official. The only rub? That email address belongs to a prankster, not the presidential son-in-law. Kushner’s personal emails have become a hot topic of conversation — and a potential focus of the Russia investigation — after a startling bit of hypocrisy revealed that six members of the Trump administration, including Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump, used their personal emails to conduct White House business. Those “lock her up” chants have fallen silent lately.

The humorous exchange, first published by Business Insider, seeks Lowell’s advice on what to do with some… erm, adult content sent over email:

On Monday, the prankster wrote to Lowell from the email address kushner.jared@mail.com asking what he should do with “some correspondence on my private email … featuring adult content.”

“Can I remove these?” the prankster asked.

“Forwarded or received from WH officials?” Lowell responded.

“I think one was forwarded from a White House official, we had discussed a shared interest of sorts,” the prankster said. “It was unsolicited. Then there are a handful more, but not from officials.”

“I need to see I think all emails between you and WH (just for me and us),” Lowell wrote. “We need to send any officials emails to your WH account. Not stuff like you asked about. None of those are going anywhere.”

“But we can bury it?” the prankster responded. “I’m so embarrassed. It’s fairly specialist stuff, half naked women on a trampoline, standing on legoscenes, the tag for the movie was #standingOnTheLittlePeople :(”

Lowell replied: “Don’t delete. Don’t send to anyone. Let’s chat in a bit.”

Lawyers associated with the Trump administration have had questionable responses to emails sent by scammers and critics alike. When these are made public — as these things tend to do — they’ve become a source of embarrassment. But Lowell pretty much aces this test. It’s such good, succinct advice:

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“Don’t delete. Don’t send to anyone. Let’s chat in a bit.”

Lowell is entirely correct to give broad, correct advice over email and then suggest a phone conversation to deal with specifics. Some lawyers can be lazy and assume because emails are privileged too that they can go into embarrassing and potentially client damaging detail in them, but it’s incredibly easy to spoof an email address. So there’s a lesson here — don’t say stuff over a potentially insecure channel that could hurt your client’s reputation. That’s just cybersecurity 101.

headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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