General
Lawrence Robbins, Lawyer for Prominent D.C. Figures, Dies at 72
He argued 20 cases before the Supreme Court and prepared witnesses like Marie Yovanovitch and Christine Blasey Ford for their congressional testimony.
Lawrence Robbins, an influential trial and appellate lawyer who argued 20 cases before the Supreme Court, prepared high-profile witnesses for their congressional testimonies and made his debut as a novelist last month, died on Nov. 2 in Manhattan. He was 72.
The cause was liver failure, his wife, Leslie Danoff, said.
In 2019, Marie Yovanovitch hired Mr. Robbins to guide her through a close-door deposition and interview with three House committees, and a public hearing before the House Intelligence Committee, during the first impeachment inquiry of President Donald J. Trump.
She had been dismissed as the ambassador to Ukraine on Mr. Trump’s orders and was devastated to learn that Mr. Trump told the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, that she was “bad news” and warned that “she’s going to go through some things” in a phone call in July 2019.
“I cannot tell you how hopeless I was feeling,” Ms. Yovanovitch said in an interview. “And he was like the sword and the shield, which really gave me confidence to stand up for myself and my profession.”
She added, “He told me that I had to be a strong witness and stand on my own two feet and that unless something egregious happened he wasn’t going to jump in.”
A year earlier, Mr. Robbins prepared Christine Blasey Ford before she testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Brett Kavanaugh, who had been nominated to the Supreme Court by Mr. Trump, sexually assaulted her while they were in high school.
