Trump’s Attacks on Law Firms Correctly Smacked Again by the Courts
Even if you adore [Trump/Biden], for whatever reason, you are a big problem if you refuse to criticize clear violations of the constitution no matter who is in the White House.
Trump suffers another defeat in court, as expected and deserved.
Shocking Abuse of Power
On April 16, NBC News reported Federal judge calls Trump’s order targeting prominent law firm a ‘shocking abuse of power’
In a blistering ruling, a federal judge blocked a new executive order from President Donald Trump punishing a prominent law firm that successfully sued Fox News for promoting false claims of election fraud.
U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan, speaking from the bench in her Washington, D.C., courtroom Tuesday, said Trump’s order targeting the law firm Susman Godfrey was part of a “personal vendetta.”
“The framers of our Constitution would see this as a shocking abuse of power,” AliKhan said.
The legal battle over Susman Godfrey is part of an intensifying effort by Trump to target his critics and other perceived enemies with presidential memorandums and executive orders that leverage the power of the Justice Department and other federal agencies to punish his opponents, legal experts and former Justice Department officials said.
Among the broad array of those targeted by Trump in recent weeks: multiple large law firms that challenged him or his administration in court, former aides who defied him during and after his first term, and people who vandalize Tesla dealerships. Trump also directed the Justice Department to drop all pending investigations related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Trump and his allies contend that then-President Joe Biden weaponized the Justice Department against him. They have repeatedly accused the Biden White House of pressing Justice Department prosecutors to be tough on Trump and of holding them back in the cases of Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
Weaponization Irony
Without a doubt Biden illegally weaponized the Justice Department against Trump.
So did New York State in it’s preposterous tax case against Trump.
I defended Trump numerous times over this weaponization.
In response I was accused of being “Extreme Right”. What a hoot.
The weaponization backfired. It is one of the reasons Trump won.
Revenge
Trump’s response is even worse. He is targeting law firms just for defending someone.
The cult foolishly cheers.
Smacked Again
I am pleased to report Trump’s Campaign Against Elite Law Firms Suffers Another Defeat in Court
In a matter of weeks, President Trump’s campaign against the legal industry racked up commitments from law firms to provide some $1 billion in pro bono work for causes favored by the White House. In court, the effort has met a much different fate: One gut punch after another.
The latest blow landed Friday, when a federal judge in Washington struck down Trump’s executive order against the law firm Jenner & Block. The ruling from U.S. District Judge John Bates extended a string of defeats the administration has suffered against law firms that have challenged executive orders targeting their businesses.
In his ruling, Bates said the White House had unconstitutionally retaliated against Jenner & Block based on the causes and clients it supports, along with its past association with Andrew Weissmann, a onetime partner. Weissmann had served on the team of Robert Mueller, the special counsel who investigated Trump during his first term.
Like other executive orders against law firms, Bates wrote, the one targeting Jenner & Block “makes no bones about why it chose its target: it picked Jenner because of the causes Jenner champions, the clients Jenner represents, and a lawyer Jenner once employed.”
Bates, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, said the executive orders violated law firms’ First Amendment rights by retaliating against them for the views embodied in their work and by “seeking to muzzle them going forward.” The orders were “doubly violative of the Constitution,” he wrote, by also seeking to sideline law firms and keep them from taking on the administration.
The ruling by Bates ruling echoed a decision earlier this month from U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who ordered a permanent block on an executive order against the law firm Perkins Coie. Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, declared the order unconstitutional and an “unprecedented attack” on foundational principles ensuring lawyers’ independence, dealing a first decisive blow against Trump’s campaign to punish law firms over their affiliations with his perceived political foes.
The Jenner & Block vs DOJ Ruling
Please consider JENNER & BLOCK LLP, Plaintiff, v. Civil Action No. 25-916 (JDB)
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, et al., Defendants.
This case arises from one of a series of executive orders targeting law firms that, in one way or another, did not bow to the current presidential administration’s political orthodoxy. Like the others in the series, this order—which takes aim at the global law firm Jenner & Block— makes no bones about why it chose its target: it picked Jenner because of the causes Jenner champions, the clients Jenner represents, and a lawyer Jenner once employed. Going after law firms in this way is doubly violative of the Constitution. Most obviously, retaliating against firms for the views embodied in their legal work—and thereby seeking to muzzle them going forward—violates the First Amendment’s central command that government may not “use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.”
More subtle but perhaps more pernicious is the message the order sends to the lawyers whose unalloyed advocacy protects against governmental viewpoint becoming government-imposed orthodoxy. This order, like the others, seeks to chill legal representation the administration doesn’t like, thereby insulating the Executive Branch from the judicial check fundamental to the separation of powers. It thus violates the Constitution and the Court will enjoin its operation in full.
Executive orders like this one have become something of a modus operandi for the President. Both before and after this order, the administration trained similar orders on other large law firms, including Covington & Burling; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP (“Paul Weiss”); Perkins Coie; WilmerHale; and Susman Godfrey. The orders follow the same recipe: other than personalized touches in their first sections, they generally direct the same adverse actions towards each firm and decry the threat each firm poses to national security and the national interest.
Analysis I.
The executive order violates Jenner’s First Amendment rights. The challenged executive order targets Jenner for what it has said and thereby attempts to dampen what it might yet say.
That is unconstitutional under any view of the First Amendment, but two additional features of this order magnify its offensiveness to the freedoms the First Amendment guarantees: its viewpoint discrimination and its targeting of lawyers in particular.
And none of the order’s sections can be salvaged by the Executive Branch’s discretion in guarding the nation’s secrets.
Put simply, this blunderbuss of an order does not engage in the sort of “legitimate consideration of speech,” Reichle v. Howards, 566 U.S. 658, 668 (2012), that might sometimes be necessary to keep classified information in safe hands. Rather than ensuring that national secrets remain with those who will keep them, Section 2’s process “seek[s] to leverage” the Executive’s control over security clearances as a way to change speech.
The President has displayed a great deal of animosity towards Jenner. Further adverse actions would not be shocking—and could very well offend the Constitution as plainly as Executive Order 14246 does. And the defendants’ own conduct during this litigation does not ease the concern: even in complying with the TRO, the defendants persisted in disparaging Jenner, implied that federal agencies may “decide with whom to work” notwithstanding the First Amendment, and “reserve[d] the right to take all necessary and legal actions” against Jenner.
Conclusion
Jenner raises many more claims of unconstitutionality. These present interesting, difficult, and potentially meritorious questions about the scope of presidential power and more. What has been said here of the First Amendment (and in passing of the Fifth and Sixth), however, is sufficient to declare Executive Order 14246 unlawful and enjoin its operation, eliminating the need to explore those other questions. So the Court need not break new ground:
Executive Order 14246 violates settled First Amendment law and its operation must be enjoined in full. Jenner’s motion for summary judgment is granted; the defendants’ motion is denied. A separate order will issue.
JOHN D. BATES
United States District Judge
Typical Clown Response
The typical clown response from the cult is to attack the judge.
In this case, Judge Bates was appointed by President George W, Bush in 2001.
Will that stop anyone? Probably not. The cult will scream about “activist judges” when the problem is an activist Trump.
Settled out of Court
Unfortunately, the Paul Weiss law firm foolishly settled out of court without a fight.
Yesterday, we learned 4 partners leave Paul Weiss after firm cut deal with Trump
Four partners at Paul Weiss — including the high-profile Democratic attorney Karen Dunn — are departing the law firm, a spokesperson told CBS News, after Paul Weiss drew attention for striking a deal with President Trump to avoid targeting by the federal government.
Earlier this year, Mr. Trump targeted Paul Weiss with an executive order that sharply limited how the firm could interact with the government, seeking to revoke staff members’ security clearances and cut off any federal contracts. The move was part of a wider gambit to punish the president’s foes in the legal community, which he claims have “played an outsized role in undermining the judicial process and in the destruction of bedrock American principles.”
The president’s executive order criticized Paul Weiss for employing Mark Pomerantz, who previously worked on the team of Manhattan prosecutors that investigated Mr. Trump. It also took aim at the firm — and Rhee — for taking on a pro bono case involving the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and criticized Paul Weiss’ diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
But that order was later rescinded by Mr. Trump, who said Paul Weiss had agreed to a litany of compromises, like auditing its hiring practices and dedicating $40 million to pro bono legal services on causes that both the firm and the Trump administration agree upon.
Got That?
Trump took aim at Paul Weiss just for representing someone.
Illegal and unconstitutional extortion is what we have here. Trump collected a cool $40 million for it.
Justice is on sale and the price is $40 million.
Unthinking Cultists Cheer
The morons in the Trump cult cheered. There is no better word than moron.
If Trump can do this so can the next Democrat president.
Yes, Biden weaponized the justice department against Trump. But that is no excuse to weaponize the justice department against entire classes of people and organizations.
When I speak of “the cult” please keep in mind there are two of them, a “Left cult” and a “Right cult”.
I spoke against Democrats’ attempt to pack the courts and I speak against Trump’s even more belligerent attempts to do the same.
More Idiocy
Those looking for more legal idiocy should consider Trump Threatens to Suspend Habeas Corpus on Grounds the US is Being Invaded
Trump orders the courts to do the “right thing”.
The US is not being invaded. And the courts have already ruled against Trump’s use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.
Trump’s threat is a blanket interpretation that everyone here illegally is an enemy invader.
No one should be cheering this.
How about Movies Are Now a National Security Threat, 100 Percent Tariffs Announced
Hooray for Hollywood!
And if you think I always side against Trump. You are mistaken.
For example, please consider Judge Dugan Illegally Shields a Migrant, Send Her to Jail
If the facts hold as presented, Judge Dugan isn’t fit to be a judge.
On May 5, I commented 35 House Democrats Join Republicans to Kill Biden’s Preposterous EV Targets
The end of California’s grip on US EV policy is nearly over!
On May 22, 2025 I commented Supreme Court Allows Trump to Fire NLRB and Merit Board Members
This is a welcome win, but it fails to address the real problem.
The NLRB swings from wild Left to Right depending on who get to make appointments, and those appointments are guaranteed political.
The EPI cites 6 rulings Trump made, that Biden reversed, and now Trump will reverse again.
The same happened in Biden’s EPA.
Ultimately, I believe a Supreme Court’s EPA strike down will be permanent, but the NRLB ruling seems temporary and very unsatisfactory.
If Trump can fire the NRLB without cause, then the next Democrat president can do the same.
The ping-pong problem is obvious. But the real problem is all of these allegedly “independent” agencies are in reality nothing more than political rubber stamps.
Unlike the “Left cult” or the “Right cult” I judge each case on its merits.
And like it or not the primary case we are discussing today is downright chilling.
Trump is using executive orders to silence opponents in clear violation of the constitution.
Everyone should be shocked and appalled by this. But the cult cheers, and most of them still will even after reading this analysis.
To repeat: Even if you adore [Trump/Biden], for whatever reason, you are a big problem if you refuse to criticize clear violations of the constitution no matter who is in the White House.
This post originated on MishTalk.Com
Thanks for Tuning In!
Mish
