More than 20 years later, former federal prosecutor Jonathan Lopez remembers Barry J. Pollack’s opening statement defending a former Enron Corp. accountant charged with fraud.
Prosecutors had characterized Michael Krautz and his co-defendants as thieving energy executives who funded lavish lifestyles by falsifying records. Pollack sarcastically turned that portrayal on its head, much to the jury’s amusement, while slightly poking fun at himself.
“We’ve all seen accountants portrayed in TV shows and movies, right? It’s always a glamorous role, right? They always have Tom Cruise playing the accountant, right?” Pollack told the jury.
“You never see a TV show about FBI agents or about cops. All the shows are always about accountants, right? You remember ‘LA CPA’ or ‘Miami Accountant’? But you know, in the real world, it’s not like that,” Pollack said. “You’ve got to put aside those stereotypes and biases. In the real world, it’s not all fast cars and beautiful women. Being an accountant is a very technical job.”
Weeks later, the judge declared a mistrial after jurors deadlocked. A year later, a new jury that heard a similar opening acquitted Krautz on all charges. Of the 30 or so individuals charged in the Enron scandal, Krautz was one of two to be acquitted.
“I didn’t like him as the trial began,” Lopez recalled. “Barry is somebody who is very well-prepared, very tenacious and yet very relatable. Usually, your opponent doesn’t have all of these things and can come across as a caricature to the jury. Barry has all these skill sets in play.”
In a career full of high-profile cases like that one and his defense of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Pollack is now having one of the most challenging legal battles yet. The Indiana University accounting major turned criminal defense attorney is representing ousted Venezuelan President Nicholás Maduro, who was removed by the US military in January and charged with profiting from drug and weapon sales funneled through illegal street gangs.
On Jan. 3, the Saturday before Maduro’s Monday morning court appearance in New York, Pollack woke up, turned on the morning news, and saw the reports about Maduro’s arrest before heading off to his gym.
An hour or so later, after he finished his workout, Pollack noticed he had numerous cell phone messages. An attorney working with the Venezuelan government had recommended Pollack represent Maduro, due to Pollack’s criminal defense background and experience in international affairs from the Assange case. Pollack had gotten Assange released from prison in exchange for a 2024 felony guilty plea under the Espionage Act.
As individuals close to Maduro were trying to reach Pollack, court-appointed attorneys in Manhattan, who had never met with Maduro, were already alerting court officials that they would be representing the ousted Venezuelan president. So Pollack’s first task was to convince the court he was Maduro’s actual lawyer.
His next one was to get paid.
Last week, in a 18-page filing, Pollack asked a New York judge to toss the case or find Maduro another attorney, contending that the government has violated Maduro’s rights to a fair trial by blocking Venezuelan funds to pay his legal fees. The judge in the case had ordered the Justice Department to make the funds available at Maduro’s initial hearing.
In the filing, Pollack said the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control initially granted him access to funds from Venezuela on behalf of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro, who was also arrested and brought to the U.S. to stand trial with her husband. However, Pollack wrote, Treasury officials “amended” the funding license three hours later regarding Maduro, while still permitting funding for his wife and her attorney.
Pollack argued that he had to be able to travel to Venezuela to interview witnesses, track down documents, and meet with government officials.
“The conduct of the United States government not only undermines Mr. Maduro’s rights, but also this Court’s mandate to provide a fair trial to all defendants who come before it in accordance with the protections afforded by the US Constitution,” Pollack wrote.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the filing.
Prosecutors have until March 13 to respond. Maduro’s next hearing is scheduled for March 26. He pleaded not guilty to the charges at the January hearing, with Pollack by his side.
In the meantime, Pollack, who declined to speak to Bloomberg Law, takes weekly train trips from his Washington office to meet Maduro, along with a Spanish interpreter, in a Brooklyn holding cell where he’s held in isolation.
‘A Great Litigator’
Famed defense and civil rights attorney Barry Scheck has known Pollack for 30 years. Pollack sits on the board of the Washington-based Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, the regional division of Scheck’s Innocence Project group that takes on pro-bono exoneration cases.
Scheck said the Maduro case stretches beyond criminal defense and into international, human rights legal challenges. Pollack, he says, has proven comfortable in such cases after securing Assange’s release.
“Barry is a good choice for this case. He is not in any way put off by serious constitutional questions and serious human rights concerns raised by the way Maduro was brought into court and charges involving the president of a sovereign country under international law,” Scheck said in an interview with Bloomberg Law. “He’s a great litigator and is perfect to handle the complex litigation this case requires. ”
Prosecutors allege Maduro led a criminal organization known as the “Cartel of the Suns” to traffic cocaine into the US.
The government’s evidence against Maduro is not yet clear. But observers say prosecutors could likely rely on cooperating witnesses, such as former gang members who might testify about Maduro’s involvement and direct knowledge of illegal activity.
Such testimony could be risky for prosecutors, who often agree to lighter prison sentences for the witnesses in exchange for their testimony.
Prosecutors will have to prove that funds Maduro received were linked to the cartels, said Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government and co-director of its Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center.
“Cooperating witness testimony, even if they have such witnesses, may not be enough for jurors,” she said. “Jurors realize that protected witnesses have struck deals with government officials.”
Pollack will have to successfully argue that Maduro was unaware of any illegal activity by the cartel, said University of Massachusetts political science professor Angélica Duran-Martinez.
Focusing on whether Maduro’s capture was legal “may not be successful” for his defense, she said. “It will be easier for the defense to challenge the charges and the credibility of the witnesses than to focus on the legality of the arrest.”
CPA Turned Defense Attorney
Pollack, 61, a partner at Harris, St. Laurent & Wechsler in Washington, is a longtime regular at the Old Ebbitt Grill, a 170-year-old eatery around the corner from the White House where Washington’s political and legal communities dine and professional deals and relationships are often struck.
Those who know Pollack well say he stands out for his methodical attention to detail—something, they say, came from working as a certified public accountant for two years before enrolling at Georgetown Law. If the US government is going to prove that Maduro’s financials came from the cartel, Pollack’s ability to dive into numbers will prove critical.
“It’s part of Barry’s superpowers,” said Jim Wyda, who hired Pollack in 1998 when he took over the Maryland public defender office. “Barry is meticulous in his preparation and has the extraordinary skill to take a lot of information and break it down systematically to tell a compelling story on behalf of his client,” he said.
In addition to his work as a federal court-appointed attorney in Maryland, Pollack sits on the court-appointed panel in the District of Columbia for individuals charged with federal crimes who can’t afford their own attorneys.
He’s also worked doggedly on his pro bono cases. In 1984, 17 Washington teenagers and young men were arrested in the brutal beating and slaying of Catherine Fuller, a Washington woman who was attacked in an alley after stepping off a local bus on her way home from her office-cleaning job.
The suspects ranged in ages from 16 to 26, and were known as the Eighth and H Street Crew. Each of the 13 who were ultimately charged claimed innocence. Eight were convicted and sentenced to as much as 35 years to life in prison.
In 2010, Pollack and a sprawling team of defense attorneys took up the case on behalf of seven of the convicted men, who claim they were wrongly charged and convicted on false evidence. The attorneys continue to fight for the men’s exoneration, even though they’ve served their sentences and been released from prison. The case ultimately went to the Supreme Court in 2017.
Pollack took on Christopher Turner’s exoneration case. Turner was 19 years old at the time of his arrest. He is 60 now.
“Barry is a pit bull,” said Turner, who spent 26 years in prison before being paroled in 2010 for good behavior. “He’s a person who is not intimidated by the Justice Department and will study and know the case better then the prosecutors in charge of the case,” he said. “Barry will have a whole team working on the case and will tell the prosecutor things the prosecutor didn’t even know.”
Pollack and his Innocence Project colleagues represented Turner and his co-defendants in their quest for a new trial all the way to the Supreme Court. In a 6 to 2 decision, the high court ruled against a new trial for the men. While Pollack was the lead attorney in hearings in the lower court leading up to the Supreme Court fight, another attorney argued the case in front of the top court.
“Many people wish that Barry would have argued on our behalf in front of the Supreme Court,” Turner said."We think things would have turned out differently.”
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