Breathtaking Corruption

Another win for Democracy Docket!

The Department of Justice (DOJ) abandoned its defense of President Donald Trump’s retribution campaign against law firms that challenged his political agenda or represented his political opponents over the years.

This makes the big law firms that rolled over the administration look even more weak and cowardly and feckless than they did before.

Well, hang on, maybe I spoke in haste.  They were completely weak and cowardly and feckless before; I’m not sure they could look worse.  But somehow they do!

The Department of Justice (DOJ) abandoned its defense of President Donald Trump’s retribution campaign against law firms that challenged his political agenda or represented his political opponents over the years.

The DOJ dropped its appeals of four lower court rulings that found Trump’s executive orders sanctioning Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie* and Susman Godfrey were unlawful and issued specifically to punish the firms for exercising their constitutional rights.

Last year, Trump attempted to paralyze the firms’ ability to represent clients in dealings with the federal government by signing a series of orders that terminated contracts and stripped their lawyers of security clearances and access to government buildings.

In addition to firms, Trump also targeted individual lawyers through his orders.

The DOJ dropping its defense of the orders represents a major win for the rule of law. By targeting firms based on the clients they represented, Trump’s orders represented a direct assault on the country’s adversarial system of justice.

Some law firms — including Paul, Weiss — folded in the face of the orders and pledged tens of millions of dollars worth of pro bono legal work for causes favored by the White House in order to get Trump’s sanctions lifted.

Other firms successfully sued. The first to do so was Perkins Coie, which argued that it was being illegally targeted because it challenged the Trump campaign’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and for its work on voting rights cases.

“The government’s decision to dismiss its appeal is clearly the right one,” WilmerHale said in a statement. “As we said from the outset, our challenge to the unlawful Executive Order was about defending our clients’ constitutional right to retain the counsel of their choosing and defending the rule of law. We are pleased these foundational principles were vindicated.”

Several district court judges overseeing the suits gave impassioned defenses of the rule of law and warned that Trump’s orders risked intimidating attorneys or law firms that might represent the president’s political opponents.

In a March hearing on Perkins Coie’s complaint, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, said the government’s defense of Trump’s order sent “chills” down her spine. A DOJ attorney had claimed that the president could also issue a retaliatory order against Williams & Connolly, a major law firm that was representing Perkins Coie in its suit.

Talk about people and institutions rising to the occasion.  Where would we be without Marc Elias and Democracy Docket?

I would love to hear from our legal peeps about whether and how this has affected the world of big law.  Have the big firms that rolled over lost standing in the legal world?

I’m tired.  You’re tired.  We’re all tired.  But we have to keep on fighting the good fight.

Another Win for Democracy DocketPost + Comments (65)