Politics

A Brand New Email Screw-Up For Abbe Lowell

Email address auto-fill is a real bitch to master, y'all.

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Abbe Lowell

Shut off your email address auto-fill. I know you don’t want to. I know, it’s a real time saver. At a prior job there was an incident with an attorney emailing documents to opposing counsel instead of co-counsel because of email auto-fill, and everyone in the entire company had to attend mandatory training to teach us all to shut off auto-fill, and still, I resisted. The chance that I’d be the one to make such a snafu seemed remote. But really, the risks are huge, as this week in legal news proves beyond all doubt.

First there was the WilmerHale associate who inadvertently emailed the Wall Street Journal privileged — and embarrassing — documents detailing a whistleblower investigation. Not a good look for the Biglaw giant.

Now CNN is reporting that Jared Kushner’s personal attorney, Abbe Lowell — who so recently aced the email etiquette pop quiz thrown at him by an internet prankster — has been felled by email address auto-fill. D’oh.

The Senate Judiciary Committee sent to Kushner — via his attorney, Lowell — a request seeking relevant documents from any “personal” email accounts. (Apparently they were a little perturbed they discovered Kushner discussed White House business through personal email accounts via media reports.) Lowell, as is his duty, forwarded the formal request to Kushner. Only one problem — he still had the email prankster’s fake Kushner email address. Wouldn’t you know it, that was the address that auto-filled when he tried to forward the request to Kushner. From there it was only a short step to the media:

Earlier this week, the prankster pretended to be Kushner and wrote to Kushner’s real attorney, Lowell, about the (fictitious) adult content of emails he had shared with White House officials, as covered by Business Insider. Apparently, earlier Thursday, when Lowell attempted to forward the very real letter from the very legitimate Senate intelligence committee leaders, his email auto-fill supplied the address of the very fake Kushner account run by the prankster. A person familiar with the email transmission told CNN it was inadvertently forwarded to the prankster’s address.

In a statement to CNN, the prankster explained why he does this: “The original prank’s intention was to meet hypocrisy and cronyism with levity and a soupçon of embarrassment, instead of giving into the well worn grooves of anger and frustration. There’s a dash of modern-day surrealism creeping in at times, and this is evolving the more friends I make in the US.”

Jeff Sessions has made it a priority to suss out administration leaks. Looks like we’ve found one source — Microsoft Outlook.

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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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