CNN
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The Trump administration is fighting a war with the legal community in the United States, and by that day its target list has grown.
So far, President Donald Trump has issued executive orders targeting two law firms representing his perceived enemies, and his administration has attacked businesses and law schools that say it may be violating the president’s initiatives on diversity, equity and inclusive efforts.
The executive order Trump has signed that it has restricted Perkins Coie’s access to classified information and federal buildings, undermining its ability to work for some clients, and sends shockwaves through legal facilities around the country.
“I’ve never seen the president issue specific orders about a law firm,” Ellen Podgaul, a law professor at Stetson University and legal ethicist, told CNN.
“You are depriving your lawyer of his ability to act in his or her role as a lawyer,” Podgaul added. “The order to me is to rob the right to advise all our rights. This is a major amendment to our constitution.”
The White House retaliation was a political response aimed at a group of lawyers and businesses that are little known for public life outside of Washington. However, the meaning may be profound. This is because the Trump administration uses its power to suppress the work of experienced and influential lawyers to directly oppose major institutions.
The move is also what the legal community sees as a fundamental right for those who need the freedom to choose who the lawyers represent, the ability Trump even had as a criminal defendant being prosecuted by the Justice Department.
The executive order on Perkins Coie suspends the national security immunity for company lawyers as it was part of an effort to commission Trump and his advisors on the now-famous Russian documents during the 2016 election. The White House says it could restrict company lawyers from visiting federal buildings.
Perkins Coie said it challenged the order in court and joined another large private law firm to represent it.
White House aides said Thursday that the administration will consider the practices of other law firms. Trump’s order against Perkins Coie included reviewing other “large, influential, or industry-leading law firms” in case the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission offers priority employment based on the applicant’s race.
Overall, the actions taken by the administration sent a “cold” tone throughout the legal industry, said Kari Brunel, founder of a legal advisory company that works with several large American law firms.
“This is unprecedented in our country. …The message is: Look where you take a step,” she said.
In recent history, the closest comparison to the Trump White House, which blacklists parts of the legal industry, is the approach that then President Richard Nixon took when he created a “list of enemies,” Brunel added.
So far, the law firm has responded out of fear, Brunel said. Many people want to avoid being a target, while others are looking at what their website says, especially regarding their diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
Security clearance for other lawyers has been stripped of in recent weeks by orders from the White House, including Washington’s largest private law firm Covington & Burling.
“American law firms have always represented interests to the US government without worrying about whether there will be retaliation or sanctions,” Brunel said. “It created an incredible horror.” (Brunelle’s company does not have Perkins Coie or Covington & Burling as its clients.)
Brunel said the numbers could be safe if leaders, law schools and others at many large law firms in the law industry publicly criticized Trump’s approach. But so far, the response has been suppressed by the law firm itself.
Mark Elias, a Democratic lawyer who was Perkins Koy’s leading political law lawyer until 2021, criticised the lack of large law firms gathering behind those who lost security clearance in an email newsletter Monday. “It’s not happening,” he wrote.
Law schools and independent groups representing the legal community are bold to push back.
For example, Georgetown University Law Center responded to a letter from an interim US lawyer in Washington, D.C., threatening not to hire students if the school’s curriculum was not in line with Trump’s Day policies.
“But the First Amendment ensures that the government cannot direct what Georgetown and its faculty are teaching and how to teach it,” Georgetown Law Dean William Trenoir wrote to Ed Martin last week.
Several prominent national groups have called the actions of the Trump administration that are detrimental to the US rule of law.
The American College of Trial Lawyers has condemned a recent statement from Trump’s close adviser Elon Musk, who sought a round of slashes for some judges.
“We ask our peers and all our lawyers, judges, lawmakers, executive officers, historians, politicians and citizens to show and condemn the threat to judges because they value our democracy and disagree with the judges with legal orders,” the group said.
The elite invited-only group also responded to executive orders retaliated against Perkins Koy and Covington & Burling, calling them a “escalating” threat and a lean of the judicial system.
“Attentions across the country should unite by denounce these actions on the strongest possible terms,” the group said.
The American Bar Association, a voluntary organisation with many American lawyers as members, has been deeply critical of the Trump administration’s actions in recent weeks, stating that its approach is an attack on the rule of law.
The group was in the conservative crosshairs for years. The Federal Trade Commission banned political appointees from taking leadership positions in the ABA or taking part in the events, Bay noted. In a letter to staff in mid-February, FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson called the group “see the interests of Big Tech” and called the “radical leftist” organisation “guided by Democratic principles.”
In a move that brings similar results, a Justice Department employee scheduled to speak at the ABA’s white-collar meeting in Miami has cancelled plans to attend, group organizer Raymond Vanne told CNN.
When the Ethics Panel spoke at a meeting on Friday about some of the administration’s most political moves, there were essentially no Justice Department officials to hear them.
