Apologies if posted already special council serving under Mueller & Comey
Nicholas J. Lewin
Attorney
212.390.9559
Nick.Lewin@KKLllp.com
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Nick Lewin represents individuals and institutions in criminal and regulatory enforcement actions, congressional investigations, and complex civil litigation. Nick co-founded the firm after serving for more than a decade as a federal prosecutor and senior FBI official — including as the Special Counsel to former FBI Directors Robert S. Mueller III and James B. Comey, and as Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Nick is among the most accomplished national security prosecutors in the United States. He served as trial counsel in United States of America v. Usama bin Laden et al., and conducted many of the most significant international terrorism jury trials since 9/11, including:
The senior-most al Qaeda leader prosecuted in any court, Usama bin Laden’s son-in-law (U.S. v. Sulaiman Abu Ghayth);
The founding al Qaeda member who led its terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and its cell in East Africa (U.S. v. Khalid al Fawwaz); and
The only former Guantánamo Bay and CIA black site detainee to be transferred to federal court, where he was tried for his role in the August 7, 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (U.S. v. Ahmad Ghailani).
Nick also helped lead the investigations into: the theft and leak of highly-classified information regarding CIA cyber-operations; the September 2016 bombings in New York and New Jersey; and the apprehension and prosecution of one of the FBI’s most-wanted terrorists, who was captured abroad in a coordinated operation conducted by U.S. Special Operations Forces. In 2009, Nick served as one of the original members of the interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force, which was established by President Obama to assess, among other things, which Guantánamo Bay detainees could be prosecuted in an Article III court.
As a federal prosecutor, Nick also led the investigations of a wide array of highly sensitive cases involving espionage, counterintelligence, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, sanctions violations, international bank fraud, money laundering, violent crime and cybercrime. These included the successful prosecutions of a private banker involved in an international bank fraud, and one of the first national-security cyber cases brought in the Southern District of New York. As Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division, Nick participated in a variety of criminal and national security investigations, and served as the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s coordinator for international and cross-border investigations.
Nick has tried a dozen federal jury trials, and has briefed and argued numerous appeals in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Nick also served as the Special Counsel for former FBI Directors Robert S. Mueller, III and James B. Comey. In that capacity, Nick acted as each Director’s national security advisor on policy, strategic, and operational issues. He regularly represented the FBI at senior-level White House National Security Council meetings, and prepared the Director, Attorney General and other senior FBI and Justice Department executives for testimony before Congress.