By Mike Scarcella
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting elite U.S. law firms have shared a common theme: his perceived grievance that an attorney linked to the firm has personally done him wrong.
The Republican president’s latest order took aim at Jenner & Block and one of its former partners, Andrew Weissmann, who served as a lead prosecutor for former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team that detailed contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russians before the 2016 U.S. election.
“He’s a bad guy,” Trump said of Weissmann just before signing the order at the White House on Tuesday.
Trump’s order against Paul Weiss, which has since been withdrawn as part of a deal with the firm, cited its employment of one-time Manhattan prosecutor Mark Pomerantz, a former Paul Weiss partner who has investigated Trump and his business practices.
An earlier order against Perkins Coie included a laundry list of Trump grievances, in particular related to the firm’s work for the campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton, his 2016 election rival, that involved research firm Fusion GPS. Fusion paid a former British spy’s company to assemble a dossier outlining alleged Russian financial and personal links to Trump’s campaign.
“He keeps bringing it up. It’s like he doesn’t want any of us to forget Fusion GPS,” U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said at a March 12 hearing in Perkins Coie’s lawsuit seeking to overturn the order. “He really has a bee in his bonnet about it.”
Democratic attorneys general from 20 states on Wednesday denounced Trump’s attacks on law firms as a “clear threat to our system of justice and our profession.” They wrote in an open letter to the American legal community that Trump had “singled out individual attorneys for condemnation because they represented clients who challenged his actions.”
The attorneys general said the acquiescence of Paul Weiss illustrated the “chilling effect” of Trump’s orders on the legal profession.
Weissmann and Pomerantz did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Jenner & Block said on Tuesday that it “will pursue all appropriate remedies” to challenge Trump’s order.
The orders against Jenner & Block, Paul Weiss and Perkins Coie suspended security clearances for their lawyers, restricted their access to government buildings and officials and threatened to cancel federal contracts held by their clients.
“President Trump is Making Big Law Great Again!” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields wrote in emailed comments to Reuters, a variation on Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
Fields also accused major law firms of using their power and influence “to make our country dangerous and less free.”
Trump has said law firms “weaponized” the justice system against him and his allies during his first term in office and during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration. Trump said in a March 9 interview with the Fox News program “Sunday Morning Futures” that his administration has “a lot of law firms that we’re going to be going after.”
Trump in a memorandum last week took a broader swipe at lawyers and law firms, directing the Justice Department to investigate firms that brought cases against the federal government over the past eight years.
The memorandum singled out Marc Elias, a longtime lawyer for Democratic politicians and a former Perkins Coie partner, accusing him of “grossly unethical misconduct” in connection with the creation of the Trump-Russia dossier.
Elias did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. In a post on social media on Tuesday, Elias said Trump’s attacks on lawyers were part of an intimidation campaign.
“I wear his scorn like a badge of honor,” Elias wrote.
Covington & Burling was hit with a narrower order last month that cited the firm’s representation of Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought two federal criminal cases accusing Trump of mishandling classified documents and taking unlawful actions to try to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden.
Other firms are on high alert, according to a senior partner at a large firm with knowledge of discussions among firm leaders. Lawyers who have worked on Trump prosecutions are scattered across many law firms, as are attorneys who twice helped build articles of impeachment against the Republican president in the House of Representatives.
Mueller, a former FBI director who was appointed in 2017 by Republican Justice Department leadership during Trump’s first term to oversee the Russian election interference investigation, was a longtime lawyer in Washington at WilmerHale.
Attempts to reach Mueller, who has retired from the practice of law, were unsuccessful. A spokesperson for WilmerHale did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jenner & Block, Perkins Coie, Covington and WilmerHale are among more than a dozen prominent law firms that are representing clients in lawsuits challenging key Trump administration policies.
Trump’s order aimed at Jenner & Block criticized its legal work supporting the protection of rights for transgender people and immigrants. The order accused the firm of pursuing “partisan goals.”
Richard Primus, a University of Michigan constitutional law professor who formerly worked at Jenner & Block, said Trump’s orders seek to demonstrate that lawyers will suffer if they oppose the president’s interests.
“They are a revenge program, in part,” Primus said. “The administration is going after law firms that the president perceives as having been hostile to him personally.”
Trump values his own power and interests “and not the healthy functioning of the larger system,” Primus added.
“He doesn’t recognize the category of legitimate opposition,” Primus said. “If you are opposed to me, your actions are illegitimate, and you should be shunned, punished and criminalized.”
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella in Washington and David Thomas in Chicago; Editing by David Bario and Will Dunham)
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