November 3, 2008 5:10 PM

Another Corruption Case for Abbe Lowell -- And This One Ends Well

Posted by Zach Lowe

Corruption allegations have dogged Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons since 2006, when he was elected governor after serving five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. The most serious questions revolved around charges that, as a congressman, Gibbons accepted cash and gifts--including a free cruise--from a close friend and in return helped steer tens of millions in defense contracts to that friend's software company.

To defend himself during the investigation Gibbons turned to McDermott Will & Emery's Abbe Lowell. On Friday prosecutors told Lowell they would not file charges against Gibbons.

It was a cleaner outcome than Lowell secured for his most famous corruption defendant, disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But it was his work on that and other high-profile cases (he also defended former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy) that drew Gibbons to him, Lowell says.

Lowell advised Gibbons against interviewing with federal authorities until he had time to dig through the evidence surrounding Gibbons's relationship with Warren Trepp, head of the software company eTreppid Technologies.

"I didn't invent the wheel here," Lowell says. "There are questions you have to ask at the outset. What is the nature and the value of the gifts? What is the relationship between the donor and the receiver? And what official acts could be linked to those gifts?"

The main gift was a cruise Trepp hosted on a 560-foot boat (other guests included Patrick Swayze, the Las Vegas Review Journal says). But Lowell saw little wrong here; Gibbons and his wife, Dawn, reimbursed Trepp the $3,000 cost of the cruise immediately afterward. And while Gibbons lobbied hard for Trepp's business, Lowell says he did the same for other Nevada businesses.

Even better for his client, Lowell says, was that the man who first made the allegations against Gibbons,  former eTreppid employee Dennis Montgomery, apparently fabricated e-mails that supposedly revealed the corrupt acts. Trepp's attorneys at Steptoe & Johnson had forensic experts trace the origin of the e-mails to prove they were fake, Lowell says. The Steptoe team was led by partner Reid Weingarten, Lowell's "best friend for 25 years" dating to their time as federal prosecutors.

Weingarten did not respond to messages seeking comment on the case.

Lowell says he turned over all this evidence to federal prosecutors over about 18 months. About two weeks ago, investigators indicated they were ready to drop the case but wanted to interview Gibbons first. Lowell suggested Gibbons do the interviews with FBI agents only after setting up ground rules limiting questions to the Trepp allegations (Gibbons also faces a lawsuit from a woman claiming he pushed her and threatened to rape her at a bar).

The interview went well enough for prosecutors to drop the case, which is what Lowell thinks they should have done months ago.

"These allegations," he says, "were absurd from the beginning."

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