Barry Pollack — the Washington lawyer with a long history of writing checks to Democratic candidates — is now leading the defense of Nicolás Maduro in one of the most politically charged criminal cases in U.S. history.
A partner at Harris, St. Laurent & Wechsler LLP and widely described in legal profiles as a “pit bull” litigator, Pollack has donated exclusively to Democratic presidential and congressional campaigns from 1999 through 2020. His giving includes support for figures like John Edwards, Barack Obama, Jon Ossoff, and Cory Booker, as well as Democratic committees such as the DCCC.
Now, he’s defending Maduro — the Venezuelan strongman captured abroad and flown to New York to face narco-terrorism and cocaine conspiracy charges. Pollack has challenged the U.S. operation that brought Maduro to court, describing the arrest as a “military abduction” and signaling plans to press arguments about sovereign immunity.
The Washington Free Beacon continues:
Maduro is far from Pollack’s only high-profile client. Last year, Pollack negotiated the plea deal that led to the release of Julian Assange, the anti-American hacker who published hundreds of thousands of classified documents provided by the U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.
Most of the active elected officials Pollack has backed have blasted Trump’s Venezuela operation. Booker called the raid “wrong” and an “extrajudicial assault on another nation’s sovereignty,” while Ivey said Trump had “no credible justification for taking over a sovereign country.” Ossoff is the outlier: The Georgia Democrat has not weighed in on the operation, telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution he needs more information on “what the president meant when he said the United States would run Venezuela.”
The combination of Pollack’s political donations and his role in the Maduro case has become a focal point for critics, even as experts stress there’s no evidence linking his campaign giving to his choice of clients.
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