Ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has brought on an attorney who negotiated WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s release.
Attorney Barry Pollack will now represent Maduro as he faces criminal prosecution in New York City after being captured in Venezuela on Saturday.
Pollack filed his appearance with the court shortly before Maduro had his first hearing Monday, when he pleaded not guilty to narcoterrorism charges.
Maduro is far from Pollack’s first high-profile client.
He represented Assange and negotiated his 2024 plea deal that paved the way for his immediate release in exchange for pleading guilty to one felony county under the Espionage Act.
Assange had sparked a national debate after publishing classified information leaked from U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning on WikiLeaks in 2010.
Pollack is also a past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He is now a partner at the law firm Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler and works as an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law.
Years before he took on Assange as a client, Pollack represented Michael Krautz, who worked as an accounting executive in Enron’s broadband unit.
After an earlier trial ended in a hung jury, Krautz went to a second trial. That jury convicted an executive who stood trial alongside him, but jurors acquitted Krautz of the same charges.
He became one of the few Enron executives to be acquitted in the trials that followed the company’s downfall.
Pollack also represented Martin Tankleff to help him prove he was wrongly convicted of murdering his parents on Long Island.
Maduro faces four charges, including narcoterrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy and firearms charges.
The indictment alleges Maduro leveraged government power for more than 25 years to protect and promote vast criminal conduct — from drug trafficking to terrorism — for the benefit of himself and his allies.
The ousted Venezuelan leader is charged alongside his wife, son, the leader of the Tren de Aragua gang and two others.
Texas-based lawyer Mark Donnelly entered an appearance on the court docket Monday morning for Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, who was captured alongside her husband in the overnight operation.
Donnelly is a partner at Parker Sánchez & Donnelly, a boutique Houston firm that specializes in business and white-collar criminal defense. Donnelly previously worked in the local district attorney’s office before a 12-year career at the Justice Department, according to his LinkedIn. – The Hill
