John M Dowd

Early life

Dowd was born in Brockton, Massachusetts. As a boy, he became fascinated with the writings of lawyer Clarence Darrow. During the summers, Dowd worked at Sankaty Head Golf Club on Nantucket Island where he became acquainted with Edward Bennett Williams. He received his A.B. cum laude from (now defunct) St. Bernard College in 1963 and J.D. from Emory University School of Law in 1965. Dowd joined United States Marine Corps and was promoted to the rank of captain. He was also a judge advocate corp.

Tenure with Department of Justice

Working for the Department of Justice, Dowd was a trial attorney for the tax division and later as a chief of an Organized Crime Strike Force from 1974–1978. His early career at the Department of Justice involved working on the tax evasion case of Meyer Lansky, the prosecution of Small Business Administration bribery cases in Virginia, and internal investigations involving financial corruption by FBI officials. Dowd helped implement and trained FBI officers and U.S. Attorneys offices the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The first case that tested the strength of the RICO laws was tried by Dowd.

In 1977 and 1978, Dowd led an investigation of Congressman Daniel J. Flood. Dowd questioned Flood's former aid, Steve Elko, who accused Flood on a number of federal contracts in exchange for cash kickbacks and also mentioned Congressman Joshua Eilberg's law firm handling the contract negotiations for a federal grant to Hahnemann University Hospital. The discovery of evidence involving Congressman Eilberg coincided with the firing of U.S. Attorney, David W. Marston. Dowd was then assigned to investigate Eilberg while the Flood investigation later expanded to include RICO violations.

In April 1979, The Wall Street Journal reporter Jim Drinkhall, wrote an article accusing federal prosecutors Dowd and William M. Kramer of developing and implementing an unethical plan to force a convicted felon, Samuel Ray Calabrese, to cooperate with the government against other organized crime figures. Following its publication, the Department of Justice launched an investigation which ultimately cleared Dowd and Kramer of wrongdoing. Drinkhall later published a second article in December 1979 where he accused Dowd and Kramer of investigating him. Dowd and Kramer filed a libel suit against Dow Jones for $5 million and was settled for $800,000 in 1984 before going to trial.

Legal career

From his departure from the Department of Justice, Dowd joined the law firm Heron, Burchette, Ruckert & Rothwell in their Washington, D.C. office. Dowd left Heron Burchette in 1990 and joined the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld where he later became partner. Dowd has set up his own practice, John M. Dowd, in Washington, D.C.

Iran–Contra Affair

During the Iran-Contra affair, Dowd represented Robert C. Dutton, a former Air Force officer and an associate to Major General Richard Secord who oversaw the contra air supply effort.

Baseball

Dowd was the Special Counsel to the Commissioner of Baseball that led to the banning of Major League Baseball player and manager Pete Rose for the Cincinnati Reds. In his role as Special Counsel to the Commissioners, Peter Ueberroth and subsequently A. Bartlett Giamatti, he submitted a 225-page report in May 1989, which detailed Rose's betting on baseball games in the 1980s. The report led to Rose's being placed on baseball's ineligible list in August 1989, even though "no evidence was discovered that Rose bet against the Reds" according to Dowd. Dowd mentioned in a 2002 ESPN interview that he "probably did". Rose later filed a defamation suit against Dowd in July 2016 after comments Dowd made in a radio interview last summer alluding to Rose engaging in statutory rape. A sworn statement was filed in July 2017 in Dowd's defense alleging that Rose had a sexual relationship with a minor.

In additional to investigating Rose, Dowd scrutinized several members of Major League Baseball for betting. Dowd investigated outfielder Lenny Dykstra over allegations of betting on baseball games in 1991. Dykstra was cleared, but admonished for his gambling addiction. Manager Don Zimmer and two umpires, Rich Garcia and Frank Pulli, were given two years probation in 1989 for sports betting. The investigation was kept secret until 2002 when the New York Daily News disclosed it.

At the request of Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent, Dowd was assigned to compile a report on New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner's $40,000 payment to Howard Spira to dig up dirt on outfielder Dave Winfield in 1990. His work led to Vincent banning Steinbrenner's day-to-day operations of the Yankees on July 30, but was later sued by Yankees' minority owners Harold M. Bowman and Daniel R. McCarthy. The suit where Bowman and McCarthy sought $30,000 in damages from Dowd was thrown out in court in early 1991 by District Judge, Robert W. Sweet.

During the Mitchell Report, which looked into the culture of steroid abuse in Major League Baseball, Dowd brought up allegations against former Maine Senator George J. Mitchell about the independence of the probe. It was after the release of the report that Dowd was convinced that Mitchell had done a good job.

John McCain

Dowd represented Senator John McCain during the Senate Ethics Investigation known as the Keating Five in the hearings held in 1990 and 1991. John McCain was cleared for impropriety by the Senate committee, but was reprimanded and criticized for his poor judgment.

ADM

Akin Gump was retained by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) during the lysine price-fixing conspiracy to develop a defense strategy following the FBI raid of ADM's offices in June 1995. Dowd interviewed employee Mark Whitacre for four hours who at the time was an informant for the FBI. Whitacre told Dowd his role as an informant and Dowd immediately informed ADM's management, who in retaliation, accused Whitacre of embezzlement. The film The Informant!, which is based on the lysine price-fixing conspiracy, Dowd was portrayed by stand-up comedian Bob Zany.

Fife Symington

Arizona governor Fife Symington retained Dowd as an adviser when he faced questioning from United States House Committee on Financial Services over the Savings and loan crisis in the late-1980s and early-1990s on using his position improperly to access loans with favorable terms. Dowd represented Symington during the latter's trial for extortion and bank fraud in 1996 and 1997, of which he was convicted for bank fraud. Symington was convicted on 7 of the 21 counts and acquitted on 3, with the other 11 resulting in a hung jury. His conviction was reversed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2000. Symington was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2001, whom Symington had once saved from a rip tide off of Connecticut.

Monica Goodling

Dowd represented Monica Goodling in the dismissal of U.S. attorneys overseen by Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. Goodling was advised by Dowd to invoke the fifth and avoid testifying to Congress about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Dowd said that the investigation was "hostile".

Raj Rajaratnam

Dowd defended hedge fund manager founder of the Galleon Group, Raj Rajaratnam in his insider trading case. Dowd created tension against the press by flipping off a photographer in May 2011 following Rajaratnam's guilty conviction.

Donald Trump

Since June 2017, Dowd has been a part of President Donald Trump's personal legal team that is charged with advising the President while there is an investigation into possible collusion with members from his 2016 campaign and the Russian government. Dowd recommended to President Trump that attorney Ty Cobb be added to his legal team.

In August 2017, Dowd "forwarded an email to conservative journalists, government officials and friends that echoed secessionist Civil War propaganda and declared that the group Black Lives Matter 'has been totally infiltrated by terrorist groups.'" The email claimed that Robert E. Lee "is no different from Washington" and "there literally is no difference between the two men." The email was written by Jerome Almon, who writes various conspiracy theory websites; Almon said that he had sent the email as a follow-up to a telephone conversation with Dowd the previous week, and that he was hoping that Dowd would circulate his email to Trump.