I think there are. I worked with someone who had that strategy. There's also a difference between private attorneys that can decline cases and not work with certain clients and appointed attorneys who represent criminal defendants under their constitutional right to counsel. The 100% criminal defense attorneys I know really focus on the facts. Your client has a right to representation and a right to defend himself.
I think I have posted about it before but attorneys can develop a "knowledge problem" which is what I think the attorney you mentioned is talking about. Rule 11 under the Federal Rules (and there are equivalents on the state level) states that when an attorney signs something, they are asserting that they have a good faith belief that what they submit is true. So if your client tells you directly that something is false, you can't later truthfully attest that it's true. If your client doesn't say anything to you (so you don't know it's false), you're permitted to make the arguments your client wants to make.
You'll see sometimes in criminal cases when a client wants to take the stand, the attorney will just say "I will let Mr. X explain what happened in his own words." The attorney in that case may not want to get involved in the attorney potentially suborning perjury or participating in a fraud on the court if the defendant is just lying his or her bum off. But the defendant still has a right to take the stand and defend himself if he wants to.