Maduro Hires Barry Pollack, Lawyer Who Defended Julian Assange

Maduro Is the Latest High-Profile Client for His Lawyer, Barry PollackMr. Pollack has also represented Julian Assange and an official of Enron.Barry Pollack has long experience negotiating with the federal government. Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York TimesJan. 5, 2026, 5:53 p.m. ETBarry J. Pollack, a lawyer representing Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader captured on Saturday in an audacious U.S. military raid on his country’s capital, is accustomed to finding innovative ways to defend clients.A seasoned trial lawyer, Mr. Pollack, 61, has had prominent clients involved in complicated international cases, including Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who was accused by U.S. authorities of illegally disseminating information related to national security.In 2024, Mr. Assange, an Australian national, was released after Mr. Pollack negotiated a deal with the Justice Department in which his client would plead guilty outside the continental United States to a single felony count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security material. Mr. Assange’s ensuing guilty plea in the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands, in the Western Pacific, ended nearly 14 years of legal wrangling over his fate, during much of which he took refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.Mr. Pollack also won the acquittal of Michael Krautz, the former senior accounting director of the broadband unit of Enron, the Houston-based energy giant that in 2001 became synonymous with corporate malfeasance. Mr. Krautz had been accused of fraudulently overselling the company’s services.In 2007, Mr. Pollack secured the freedom of Martin Tankleff, a Long Island man who had served 17 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of killing his parents.Jon May, a lawyer who represented Gen. Manuel Noriega — the Panamanian leader captured by U.S. forces in 1989 and convicted in Miami, in a case that has drawn parallels with that of Mr. Maduro — said that the captured Venezuelan leader “could not be in better hands” than those of Mr. Pollack.That, Mr. May cautioned, that did not mean Mr. Pollack “has the resources necessary to defend him.”But Mr. Maduro “certainly has a lawyer who will figure it out, if it can be figured out,” Mr. May said.Mr. Pollack earned his law degree from Georgetown University in 1991, according to the biography page from his law firm, Harris St. Laurent and Wechsler, which has offices in Washington and New York. He then clerked for Judge Thomas A. Flannery of Federal District Court in Washington.An adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s law school, Mr. Pollack teaches a course called “Anatomy of a Federal Criminal Trial,” focusing on the Enron case.Last semester, he taught the course alongside Jonathan Lopez, the former federal prosecutor who argued the case against Mr. Krautz, the former Enron executive.Kirsten Noyes contributed research, and Carol Rosenberg contributed reporting.Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.SKIP