Trump Tests How Many Law Firms He Can Destroy Before Someone Stops Him
from the remember-how-trump-claimed-he-was-ending-lawfare? dept
It took exactly three days for Trump to prove that Judge Beryl Howell’s “Alice in Wonderland” comparison wasn’t just apt, but prescient. After the judge blocked his executive order attempting to destroy Perkins Coie for representing his political opponents, Trump has now issued an almost identical order targeting another major law firm, Paul Weiss. Because when you’re living in Wonderland, why stop at just one “off with their heads”?
Last week’s executive order targeting Perkins Coie represented an unprecedented abuse of executive power to punish lawyers for representing political opponents. The court’s swift rejection made clear just how far beyond constitutional bounds Trump had stepped. But rather than accept those bounds, Trump has decided to test just how many law firms he can threaten before someone stops him.
The targeting of Paul Weiss isn’t just another swing at Trump’s enemies list — it’s a calculated escalation. Like Perkins Coie, Paul Weiss is a large, well-known law firm, representing a long list of major companies, handling all sorts of corporate law issues, from mergers and acquisitions to cybersecurity. But Trump’s new executive order makes it crystal clear that the firm’s real crime was daring to challenge his actions.
The executive order reads like a confession of unconstitutional retaliation, explicitly laying out two “crimes” that… are not crimes. Or even unethical or problematic things. It’s just doing regular law work that just so happened to target Donald Trump and his violent supporters.
First, a Paul Weiss partner dared to represent the DC Attorney General in litigation over January 6th:
In 2021, a Paul Weiss partner and former leading prosecutor in the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller brought a pro bono suit against individuals alleged to have participated in the events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, on behalf of the District of Columbia Attorney General.
And second — perhaps even more telling — the firm hired someone who tried to hold Trump accountable while serving as a prosecutor:
In 2022, Paul Weiss hired unethical attorney Mark Pomerantz, who had previously left Paul Weiss to join the Manhattan District Attorney’s office solely to manufacture a prosecution against me and who, according to his co-workers, unethically led witnesses in ways designed to implicate me. After being unable to convince even Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg that a fraud case was feasible, Pomerantz engaged in a media campaign to gin up support for this unwarranted prosecution.
That’s it. That’s the justification for trying to destroy one of America’s premier law firms — they represented clients Trump didn’t like and hired someone who investigated him. The nakedness of this retaliation should be terrifying. Trump isn’t even bothering with the usual pretense of national security or public interest — he’s essentially declaring that investigating or opposing him legally is grounds for destruction.
The executive order also mentions some nonsense about DEI, which is just Trump continuing to pretend that that shit matters to anyone, but also reinforces just how unconstitutional all of this is.
The mechanisms of destruction in this order are identical to those used against Perkins Coie — and just as constitutionally grotesque. First, it weaponizes federal contracts: any company doing business with the government (which includes most major tech companies and countless others) must now effectively choose between keeping Paul Weiss as counsel or keeping their government contracts. It’s economic assassination dressed up as executive action.
But the most chilling provision might be the one about federal buildings. As with the Perkins Coie order, the order allows the government to bar any Paul Weiss lawyer from entering any federal building if officials decide their presence would be “inconsistent with the interests of the United States.” Think about what that means: they could be blocked from entering federal courthouses to represent their clients. While the DOJ suggested that kind of result would be “unlikely” in the hearing over Perkins Coie, it didn’t deny that the order could be used that way.
This needs to be called out for what it is: a president is literally trying to physically prevent lawyers from doing their jobs because they represented the “wrong” clients or hired the “wrong” people.
There’s no pretense of due process. No actual allegations of wrongdoing. Just naked retaliation against lawyers for doing lawyer things — representing clients in court and hiring experienced prosecutors. The fact that Trump is doubling down on this strategy mere days after a federal judge called the same exact thing unconstitutional shows exactly how far his administration is willing to go to destroy any mechanism of accountability.
The silence from self-proclaimed defenders of limited government is deafening. The same voices that spent years spinning conspiracy theories about the Biden administration’s supposed “weaponization” of executive power through “lawfare,” are mysteriously quiet when faced with actual, documented attempts to destroy law firms for representing the “wrong” clients.
This goes far beyond partisan hypocrisy. What we’re witnessing is the methodical dismantling of the legal profession’s ability to challenge executive power. Today it’s firms that represented Democrats or investigated Trump. Tomorrow it could be anyone who challenges or pushes back on what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing. This is a direct assault on any attempt to hold this administration accountable.
When a president can simply declare “off with their heads” to any law firm that dares to represent opposition, we’ve moved well past constitutional crisis into genuine authoritarianism.
The courts blocked the first attempt. Now they’ll need to block this one too. But the real question is: how many more law firms will Trump target before either Congress or the courts put a permanent stop to this abuse of power? And how many firms will think twice about representing the next client challenging executive overreach?
Trump isn’t just acting like a mad king — he’s become one, complete with his “off with their heads” declarations against any who dare challenge him. His supporters in Congress can no longer pretend otherwise. The only question left is whether they’ll help him destroy everything or finally use their authority to stop him.
Filed Under: donald trump, due process, executive orders, lawyers
Companies: paul weiss, perkins coie
Comments on “Trump Tests How Many Law Firms He Can Destroy Before Someone Stops Him”
And that’s exactly what his followers and supporters wanted. Hell, I’m surprised that neither Trump nor his conservative voting base have started calling for the extrajudicial execution of anyone Trump wants dead.
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We’re not even two months in. Give it time.
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Well, expect “will no-one rid me of that meddlesome judge/justice?” in due time. There is a reason the Oathkeepers and Proud Boys have been set all free, whether pardoned or by commuted sentences for the worst of the worst.
Trump insinuates where his power formally doesn’t reach. It’s his mob boss upbringing.
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Well, there was that time he sent them to murder Congress.
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A fair point. 🤔
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Hey, that was just
terrorismtourism!This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
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Yes, I also find myself wondering why those I disagree with politically haven’t decided to order my extrajudicial execution. Just the other day I wondered this aloud in the grocery store. “Why aren’t we all being round up at gunpoint yet” I shouted, to no one in particular. Judging by the reactions of those around me, you’d think I was acting crazy, that the brain worms had finally gnawed away the last of my sanity. But you and me and good ole Mike know that can’t be right. We are obviously the sane ones. And thank the heavens for that, can you imagine how dreadful life would be otherwise?
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Did you vote for him once, twice, or three times?
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Did you write the first draft of that in your own feces?
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If it were a simple disagreement of politics like how much more or less we should tax a certain income level, that’d be one thing.
When the disagreement is about human rights, it’s not politics anymore. It’s a fundamental difference that cannot be resolved nor compromised on. When Trump is actively pursuing genocide (yes, actually – look up the definition, it’s not just mass murder), this isn’t just a political disagreement.
But you’re also pretending like Trump hasn’t actually already called for the execution of people he disagrees with. He said General Milley deserved to be executed for calling China to tell them we were okay during Trump’s insurrection.
Comparing a post on a website with a rude person talking to strangers in public about non sequiturs is some dim-witted gaslighting.
Yeah.
Republicans are anti American traitors. I sincerely hope they enjoy their dead families.
Checks and balances?
I did go through US elementary school education, and they taught me there are three branches of government that check and balance each other. Years later I attended US collegiate level education where I learned about the fourth estate (Thanks, Mike, Tim, [otre]Tim, Karl, Cathy [EFF), and the rest of you who tirelesly do the yeoman’s job.
But [and you know they say “everything before the ‘but’ is a lie but that’s not it in this case.]
So… But… we now have a POTUS who’s such a POS bully that the legislature refuses to buck him. He’s appointed judges so stupid that they make Aileen Cannon [no judicial experience of note] look smart. He’s removed inspectors general, judges, and anyone who doesn’t see his way. Now he’s going after lawfirms.
Administrative – gone.
Legislative – gone.
Judicial – gone except for a few federal judges not based in Texas or other place where shit for brains is a real thing.
Fourth Estate – I read what you are putting out. I read lots of people putting out a lot of content….
How do we make that 4th estate content lead to a change in regime or behavior?
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The constitution recognized a single higher authority than than the three branches. It’s defined in the first part of the sentence of the preamble.
The “Forth Estates” power is entirely invested in their ability to motivate that power.
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You won’t convince mainstream media—especially larger outlets such as the New York Times—to call for a regime change unless Trump does so much damage that even those outlets realize he’s fucked us all over. And you won’t convince right-wing media outlets to make the same call under any circumstances; like Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, their sociopolitical psychology has them convinced that Trump, the GOP, and even themselves can’t ever admit to being wrong about anything.
Smaller, local outlets are better bets because they can provide a more accurate picture of what’s happening in local communities that are being hit hard by all this chaos. You can become a small part of that by asking them to cover that chaos. Better yet, write letters to the editor with the intent of having them published—but try to write in a way that’s less about preaching to an anti-Trump choir and more about converting the average Trump voter into being part of that choir. You’ll want to speak to their concerns in their language and ask them to change their minds.
Everything national begins at the local. Start there and you’ll have a better chance of changing things.
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i really wish there were a way to save VOA, RFE/RL, RFA, etc., tho’.
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We’re going to lose things while Trump is president. Some of those things can be salvaged soon after he’s gone. Some of them will take time to rebuild, possibly even years. Some things will be lost forever. The trick is in making sure one of the things we can salvage is a functional representative democracy.
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The First Amendment inherently implies the government cannot make journalists stop being dumbasses.
Our recourse for bad journalism is stop doing things that give them money.
And if some multi-bazillionaire keeps terrible journalism outfits going forever, there is nothing we can individually do about it except ignore them.
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…and give money to people/organizations that give us quality journalism. Axing a subscription to the Washington Post won’t mean shit for journalism if you aren’t diverting that money to an outlet that needs it.
Before today I never associated Nazi’s and Wonderland.
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It’s not so much all of Wonderland as it is the tyrannical ruler thereof.
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yeah. I was just being snarky about the absurdity of the reality we find ourselves in.
I think we know the answer to that final question.
None. The old meme of “I’ll see you in court!” has now been updated to the new meme of “Challenge accepted!!”
As we’ve seen more and more often of late, the government (at all levels) tends to get the middle tier of graduating lawyers from the various law schools. The top minds tend to get hired by the kind of money that the government can only dream of spending on legal talent.
Which really shows in Trump’s case, as lately he’s been able to hire nothing more than ineffective ambulance chasers, indicating to me that his money is not so large as he claims it to be.
Serious question; where is Trump’s authority coming from right now? The election he ‘won’ wasn’t any kind of fair, he’s blatantly ignoring the constitution, so what’s his basis for legitimacy? Why should anyone listen to him?
Re: 'As this order is illegal and without constitutional backing I refuse to follow it'
That would be ‘A bluff never called becomes reality’ and ‘A law or limit never enforced effectively doesn’t exist’.
He has as much power as he can get away with claiming, and with the republicans in charge off basically the entire government and demonstrating no inclination to reign him in so long as people and agencies keep accepting his decrees and orders as valid and treating them as such he effectively has no limits on what he can do no matter what the actual laws or constitution say to the contrary.
As for how to stop him when the regular checks and balances have shown themselves to be either fully on his side or a bluff of power that he’s called… at this point it’s starting to look like that may require large swaths of the government and regular citizenry to return the favor and treat his orders and demands the same way he treats the laws of the country, ignoring them as illegal and therefore not valid.
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That One Guy, I like what you write. So do others so you get all the points for best week post. There’s a reason for that. You’re a smart dude. So with that in mind you write:
When I ignore what LEOs with infinite taxpayer backed resources ask of me the result is a lot of personal pain. That pain starts with a throwdown, then an arrest, then imprisonment, then capitulation, all at a huge exepense to me. Expense to OrangeMan: $0.
So I hear you, and I get it. How can “we” fight the dissolution of the constitution while not destroying our own lives in the process?
He’s wrong, right? Then HE should pay, not WE.
Love your chain of thought. Hope you can shed light in this darkness.
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He is the duly elected President of the United States. See Article II, U S Const.
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See the rest of the Constitution also for why he can’t just do whatever he wants.
'Laws and legal rulings are for the little people.'
Well, I stand corrected.
It would seem I had been way overthinking it when I suggested that the inevitable response to a judge ruling against convicted felon Trump would be for him to remove the judge in question(though he’s trying to do that too), turns out it’s much easier to just ignore the ruling and carry on like it didn’t exist.
I am getting repeated reminders of that line from Shakespeare
“Kill all the lawyers.”
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You should’ve paraphrased it like so:
“Kill all the dictator-wannabe’s”.
Re: the rest of the story
Go ahead, tell us why Dick the Butcher wanted to kill all the lawyers, what he hoped to accomplish. No need to stop at half measures.
Wouldn’t it be nice if defending blatantly unconstitutional actions could get the government’s lawyers disbarred?
6th amendment violation
The 6th amendment says (among other things) that you have a right to be represented by a lawyer. This is clearly an attempt to prevent any lawyer from representing any adversary of Trump.
Right to waste court time and taxpayer money
At least they are Attorneys At Law so they can defend themselves well in their free time. The only thing courts can do for them is rule the frivolous lawsuit filers pay the Attorneys to defend themselves, but good luck getting Trump to pay for anything, as all the contractors in NY will attest.
How does this affect them?
Can someone explain how this affects them?
They aren’t disbarred from what I read. Just revoked clearances and inability to access government facilities.
I don’t know anything about what law firms do, aside from representing clients, so I don’t understand what harm that causes.
To clarify, I’m not saying it’s right, I seriously just don’t understand what the actual issue is. The article doesn’t actually clarify what the ‘blacklisting’ is, or how it affects them.
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Nevermind, I had to re-read the article a few times.
I didn’t catch that courthouses would be included in government facilities.
I see now.
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It’s not just the federal buildings, it’s that they can no longer work with any federal contractor, which is like every big business. It basically wipes out a huge percentage of their customer base.
Federal buildings
Courts.
Airports.
Aircraft [excluding private ones]
Bars [not the drinking kind, the lawyer kind]
Houses of law [like courthouses but administrative]
Passport offices
Just getting started, but this is clearly an overbroad punishment.
I’ll end as best I can eloquently do so,
FUCK TRUMP.
They fell for it or at least paid him off. So sad, nobody has ball Americans are cowards, we will never return if nobody is willing to fight. Cowards like this just make me sick. 10 years spent fighting for this country. Now disabled and this is depressing
Thank you
Thank you for your service. If you don’t mind sharing what you did, please do.
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