DOJ drops defense of Trump orders targeting law firms

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday deserted its defense of President Trump’s executive orders targeting several of the nation’s top law firms, court filings show. 

The Trump administration abandoned its appeals of four rulings by federal judges that rebuffed the orders aimed at law firms Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, Jenner & Block and Susman Godfrey. Lawyers for the DOJ moved to voluntarily dismiss the appeals late Monday.

Trump’s orders sought to undercut each law firm’s business by limiting government contracts, in addition to employees’ security clearances and their access to government buildings. 

The four firms claimed the directives were retribution for representing Trump’s political adversaries, as each had ties to opponents of the president.  

Perkins Coie long drew Trump’s ire for advising Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign and working with an opposition research firm tied to the discredited Steele dossier, while WilmerHale employed former special counsel Robert Mueller before and after his stint investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. 

Jenner & Block previously employed Andrew Weissmann, a prominent Trump critic and legal pundit who worked on Mueller’s probe, and Susman Godfrey helped Dominion Voting Systems secure a multimillion-dollar settlement against Fox News after the 2020 election. 

The Hill requested comment from Perkins Coie, WilmerHale and Jenner & Block. Susman Godfrey could not be reached and has not yet issued a statement. 

The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.  

DOJ lawyers had argued that it’s within the president’s discretion to decide with whom to trust the nation’s secrets, contending that the orders were designed to assuage Trump’s concerns about the law firms. 

But judges resoundingly rejected the government’s position, calling it designed to “chill legal representation the administration doesn’t like” and positing that upholding the order would be “unfaithful to the judgment and vision of the Founding Fathers.” 

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, appointed by former President Obama, said Trump’s order against Perkins Coie “draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’” 

Still, not all law firms targeted by the president challenged his efforts.  

The law firm Paul, Weiss saw the executive order against it revoked after it agreed to provide $40 million in free legal services to support administration initiatives. The firm Skadden struck its own deal soon after, agreeing to provide at least $100 million in pro bono legal services “during the Trump administration and beyond.” 

At least seven other firms agreed to provide tens of millions of dollars in pro bono work to the Trump administration. That was despite there being no executive orders issued against those firms; the threat of one was enough to bring them to the bargaining table. 

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