Shame on the venerable Paul Weiss law firm for giving in to President Trump and breaching every cardinal principle on which the firm has stood for generations.

Roy Cohn would never have caved. How do I know? He said as much.

In October 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew, after protesting his innocence for 65 days, pleaded no contest to a criminal tax evasion charge and resigned his office. Multiple criminal charges, involving cash payoffs to Agnew for the award of state contracts when he was governor of Maryland, were dropped as part of the plea bargain.

In an open letter to Agnew, published Oct. 15, 1973 on the op‐ed page of the New York Times, Cohn — already the lawyer and mentor for a young real estate developer named Donald Trump — took Agnew to task, in words that could have been written for the Paul Weiss capitulation.

Cohn’s tone was defiant. He wrote: “How could a man who made courage a household word lose his? How could one of this decade’s shrewdest leaders make a dumb mistake such as you did in quitting ... If you had stood your ground ... your chances for legal and political survival were excellent. ...Your decision not to stand up and fight was more than a personal one. It was at best a grievous disappointment to, and at worst a betrayal of, millions of Americans who gave you the opportunity for greatness ...”

The Paul Weiss settlement was a betrayal of the profession that gave the firm its “opportunity for greatness.”

Paul Weiss, a multinational law firm, had come under fire from Trump for personal reasons arising from before he was reelected. A Mar. 14 executive........

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