Donald Trump expanded his retaliation campaign against the law firm on Friday night, ordering Attorney General Pam Bondy to introduce her to what she found to be a partisan lawsuit to the White House and encourage punitive actions that could potentially crippling the companies involved.
The directive was outlined in a swept memo that Trump allegedly filed a frivolous claim designed to cause delays. It came after a week’s set-up. There, many judges issued temporary injunctions that hindered the implementation of Trump’s agenda.
Trump’s memo directed Bondi to seek sanctions against the company and to take disciplinary action against his lawyers. But it’s up to the federal judge to impose sanctions, and perhaps, recognising the uncertainty that his attorney general will win, Trump also ordered an introduction to the White House.
“If the Attorney General determines that conduct by a lawyer or law firm in a case against the federal government guarantees that it seeks sanctions or other disciplinary action, the Attorney General will … recommend the President…” the memo said.
As a result, the memo has created a formal mechanism for Trump to unilaterally decide whether to impose politically charged sanctions through executive orders to prevent him from stripping security clearance lawyers needed to perform his job or working on federal contracts.
Several legal experts suggested that the memo, in theory, allows Bondi to decide on a particular case in which a temporary injunction caused unnecessary delays, and introduces the company that filed the case to face the hobling effects of the punitive executive order.
It could have horrific effects and lead to the amount of lawsuits against the Trump administration, experts said. There is a fear that their representatives can place them on the president’s cross, putting legal practices at risk, even if the lawsuit is actually for a legitimate purpose.
Trump also recommended that Bondi open a review of “actions” of lawyers and their respective law firms in cases against the federal government that returned to the start of his first term in 2017, and whether to guarantee additional punitive behavior.
The memo came in recent weeks when Trump used executive orders targeted law firms to make a huge impact.
More recently, Trump stripped the company’s attorney Paul Weiss of holding security clearances, and the employee banned him from entering the federal government building over his long-standing complaints about former partner Mark Pomerantz, who tried to file a criminal case against him in New York.
The executive order targeting Paul Weiss was roughly the same as the order that punished Perkins Koy for his relationship with a lawyer who once worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
Paul Weiss retracted the order Thursday after it offered a series of concessions, including its chairman Brad Carp providing criticism of Pomerantz to appease Trump. He has pledged to provide the $40 million worth of legal services that have led to Trump’s defense.
But those familiar with the issue have said Trump has branded a series of temporary restraining orders that delayed the implementation of his political agenda, and in one instance, Elon Musk’s cost cuts are likely unconstitutional.
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The most aggravated case for Trump was the challenge of eliminating hundreds of Venezuelan gang members without a legitimate process in Washington’s federal district court for the use of the alien enemy law of 1798, in order to strengthen deportation.
In that case, US District Judge James Boasberg ordered the administration to turn around deportation flights in the air, temporarily banning further deportation under the alien enemy laws.
After the judge could not recall the two flights on the basis that he failed to replicate the verbal instructions in written orders, the case turned into a administration headache, leading the judge to effectively open up whether the White House fled the court orders.
“You felt you could ignore it because it wasn’t in the order it was written. That’s your first argument. My written order was mean, so the idea that it could be ignored is one stretch,” Boasberg said at a recent hearing.
The administration claims it did not violate the order, but at the heart of the conflict is the administration’s belief that judges lacked jurisdiction to hear the case first, and that it ignores the reality that federal courts can consider whether or not the decree is properly invoked.
Against the backdrop, he said the administration is taking on an increasingly combative stance towards Boasburg and is considering whether to invoke the state’s secret privileges rarely used to stonewall judge investigations.
