John M. Dowd (born February 11, 1941), an American lawyer. He received his J.D. from Emory University School of Law.
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As of 2010 Dowd is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.
Dowd was the investigator and author of a report that led to the banning of Major League Baseball player Pete Rose. In his role as Special Counsel to the Commissioner, A. Bartlett Giamatti, he produced the Dowd Report, which detailed Rose's betting on baseball games in the 1980s, including teams Rose was managing at the time. The report led to Rose's lifetime ban in August 1989, even though "no evidence was discovered that Rose bet against the Reds." according to Dowd in 1989, Dowd mentioned in a 2002 ESPN interview that he "probably did".[1]
Dowd represented Senator John McCain (R-AZ) during the Senate Ethics Investigation known as the Keating 5 in the hearings held in 1990 and 1991. John McCain along with John Glenn were cleared for impropriety by the Senate committee, but were reprimanded and criticized for their poor judgment.[2]
Dowd represented former Arizona governor Fife 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.[3] Symington was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2001, whom Symington had once saved from a rip tide off of Cape Cod.[4]
Dowd was the lawyer who represented Monica M. Goodling in her Fifth Amendment challenge to speaking before Congress in regard to the firing of nine US Attorneys. Goodling, later took immunity for her testimony revealing that she did in fact discriminate against people she felt were "too liberal", or "Democrats". On July 28, 2008, a Justice Department report concluded that Goodling had violated federal law and Justice Department policy by discriminating against job applicants who weren't Republican or conservative loyalists. "Goodling improperly subjected candidates for certain career positions to the same politically based evaluation she used on candidates for political positions," the report concluded. In one instance, Justice investigators found, Goodling initially objected to hiring an assistant prosecutor in Washington because "judging from his resume, he appeared to be a liberal Democrat type." In another, she rejected an experienced terror prosecutor to work on counterterror issues at a Justice Department headquarters office "because of his wife's political affiliations,".In another case, colleagues said that Goodling blocked the appointment of a female prosecutor in Washington because she "believed the lawyer was involved in a lesbian relationship with her supervisor", according to the report."There was no romantic relationship," said Lisa Banks[26], the attorney for Leslie Hagen, "but the rumors were pernicious and grew legs, and it cost her the job."[27] Goodling may also face a criminal investigation into her conduct.[28]
Dowd was the lawyer who represented Mark Whitacre in the film The Informant! in the huge ADM price fixing scandal. He secured a guilty plea for his client for ten years in federal prison. The price fixing co-conspirators his client helped arrest received 1/3 of that time.[5]