Trump v. law firms: President uses power on potential court foes

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump first used the power of the White House against a law firm in February, ordering a review of Covington & Burling’s government contracts because a lawyer had assisted the special prosecutor who indicted him in Florida and the District of Columbia.

Security clearances should be suspended, Trump wrote, pending a review of the lawyers’ roles and responsibilities “in the weaponization of the judicial process.”

More than a dozen law firms have made deals with Trump or faced executive orders against them for participating in perceived sleights or harmful actions against him or his supporters, a tactic legal experts say undermines the rule of law by discouraging lawyers from taking cases and clients disfavored by the White House.

Clark Neily, a senior vice president for legal studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told reporters earlier this month that he has “rarely seen something more palpably unconstitutional” than the orders targeting law firms.

Neily called Trump’s orders “a dagger at the heart of due process and of our national tradition of resolving disputes peacefully through a legal process.”

Trump’s executive orders took aim at law firms over suits they brought on behalf of their clients against Trump or his allies, attorneys they hired, or their perceived violations of discrimination law for diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

The orders question their government contracts, remove security clearances, revoke access to government buildings and resources and more.

Four of the targeted firms — WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block and Susman Godfrey — have challenged the orders in court. All have received temporary court orders blocking the Trump administration’s executive orders.

Judge Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, in granting a partial temporary restraining order in favor of WilmerHale, wrote that “the retaliatory nature of the Executive Order at issue here is clear from its face” and the order would be crippling to the firm, endangering its relationship to its clients and chilling their ability to enter federal courthouses.

“There is no doubt this retaliatory action chills speech and legal advocacy, or that it qualifies as a constitutional harm,” Leon wrote.

Nine law firms — Paul, Weiss; Skadden; Milbank; Willkie Farr; Cadwalader; Kirkland & Ellis; A&O Shearman; Simpson Thacher; and Latham & Watkins — have cut deals with the Trump administration.

Those include terms like providing pro bono work for the government, hiring fellows for work the administration supports and not discriminating against conservative attorneys, and have sparked resignations and public recriminations.

The president announced on social media that Skadden agreed to provide at least $100 million “in pro bono Legal Services, during the Trump Administration and beyond, to causes that the President and Skadden both support,” among other terms.

Dozens of former Skadden attorneys signed a public letter that called the deal “embarrassing” and said it didn’t live up to the firm’s position as a leading law firm.

“In light of Skadden’s position, it is outrageous and self-interested that rather than fulfilling the legal profession’s oath and standing in solidarity with fellow law firms that were fighting to uphold the Constitution, Skadden caved to bullying tactics instead,” the letter said.

Trump also lashed out at the judge assigned to the Perkins Coie case in a post on his social media platform Truth Social. In the post Trump incorrectly says he is suing the firm but goes on to attack Judge Beryl Howell as having a “sick judicial temperament.”

“It’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome, and she’s got a bad case of it. To put it nicely, Beryl Howell is an unmitigated train wreck. NO JUSTICE!!!” Trump posted.

Howell, in an opinion Friday striking down that executive order, wrote that no American president has ever done such an executive order targeting a law firm and it in effect sends “the clear message: lawyers must stick to the party line, or else.”

In an interview with Time magazine, Trump defended the executive orders and said “Well, I’ve gotta be doing something right, because I’ve had a lot of law firms give me a lot of money.”

He also said the law firms’ deals with him were signs that “they knew what they did wrong and they didn’t want to get involved with it. And that’s okay. That’s the way it works, unfortunately.”

The Trump administration has defended the executive orders and argued in court filings in the Perkins Coie case that they are “well within the scope of Presidential prerogative” and represent the federal government acting as “contractor and employer, managing who it does business with and how, based on what it believes to be in the public interest.”

In a filing in court, the administration downplayed the impact of the order, saying it did not summarily terminate security clearance or access to government buildings. “However, nightmare scenarios such as all Perkins attorneys being barred from courtroom practice, all staff being banned from going to the post-office, and no Perkins employees ever being allowed to join the Federal workforce is, currently, the stuff of imagination,” the administration said.

Eroding resistance

Several experts said that Trump’s efforts to target law firms and other critics undercuts a major feature of the U.S. legal system — the right to an attorney.

Experts said bringing the weight of the federal government against those who cross him represents an escalation which has so far been met with little resistance from Republican lawmakers.

Gregg Nunziata, executive director for the Society for the Rule of Law, said the attacks on law firms and legal organizations and Trump’s criticisms of judicial rulings combine to erode resistance to Trump’s moves to exert presidential power.

The administration is “trying to choke off” both the lawsuits headed into the legal system and the judicial orders coming out of the system, Nunziata said. “So it’s a terribly alarming time.”

Beyond directly targeting law firms, Trump and his allies have criticized bar associations and publicly mulled pulling the nonprofit status of groups that oppose the administration in court.

David Rapallo, an associate professor of law at Georgetown Law and former staffer at the White House and Congress, said in the past members of Congress raised concerns about the executive branch wielding its power to stifle critics or retaliating against those with different political views.

“What we’re seeing is a lawless, transactional presidency with a very simple equation: agree with what he wants whether it’s legal or not, or get retaliated against, legal or not. It’s pressing against the rule of law across the board,” Rapallo said.

Those concerns have included multiple investigations into alleged targeting of conservative groups by the IRS during the Obama administration, Rapallo said, as well as investigations into alleged targeting of conservatives by the Biden administration.

At a White House event last month, Trump said his administration was looking at revoking the nonprofit tax status of a number of organizations, including Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“It’s supposed to be a charitable organization,” Trump said of CREW. “The only charity they had is going after Donald Trump. So we’re looking at that. We’re looking at a lot of things.”

The group, which regularly sues the federal government, has filed or served as counsel for several lawsuits against the Trump administration since January. In a statement the group pushed back on Trump’s threat.

“For more than 20 years, CREW has exposed government corruption from politicians of both parties who violate the public trust and has worked to promote an ethical, transparent government. Good governance groups are the heart of a healthy democracy. We will continue to do our work to ensure Americans have an ethical and accountable government,” the statement said.

Democrats respond

So far the only objections have come from Democrats. In joint letters, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., urged the law firms that settled with the president to provide information on the deals they cut and called the orders “an unprecedented abuse of power” and “an open attack on the rule of law.”

“These executive orders seek to impose harsh penalties on lawyers for the causes and clients they represent. This express form of viewpoint discrimination — a classic violation of First Amendment rights — runs counter to American values that have been the bedrock of our democracy and the legal profession since the founding era,” the letters said.

In a statement last month, the American Bar Association objected to Trump’s efforts to intimidate judges and law firms and called on attorneys to resist the executive orders.

“We reject efforts to undermine the courts and the profession. We will not stay silent in the face of efforts to remake the legal profession into something that rewards those who agree with the government and punishes those who do not. Words and actions matter,” the ABA statement said. “And the intimidating words and actions we have heard and seen must end. They are designed to cow our country’s judges, our country’s courts and our legal profession.”

Last month, more than half a dozen Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the ABA praising the group’s work and that of law firms that stood up to the administration’s “illegal and unconstitutional attacks on the legal profession.”

The letter, led by Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., argued that Trump’s efforts violated free speech rights and the Constitution’s right to independent counsel.

The Justice Department responded with a memo that it would no longer support employees participating in ABA events, and attendance at events had to be approved by the deputy attorney general, citing its litigation in favor of “activist causes” and opposition to specific Trump administration policies.

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Ryan Tarinelli contributed to this report.