A federal judge blocked parts of Donald Trump’s executive order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie from the bench Wednesday, saying that aspects of it sent “little chills” down her spine.
Specifically, Judge Beryl Howell blocked the parts of the order the firm had challenged that bars its employees from federal buildings and threatens its clients’ government contracts.
Trump has been candid that his punishment of the firm stems from years-old grudges.
“Notably, in 2016 while representing failed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS, which then manufactured a false ‘dossier’ designed to steal an election,” the executive order said. “This egregious activity is part of a pattern. Perkins Coie has worked with activist donors including George Soros to judicially overturn popular, necessary, and democratically enacted election laws, including those requiring voter identification.”
Perkins Coie also used to be the home of Marc Elias, a high-profile liberal lawyer.
Trump signed a similar memo last month targeting the firm Covington & Burling for the sins of doing pro-bono work for former Special Counsel Jack Smith and employing prominent Democratic lawyers.
While the situation is less dire for white-shoe law firms than it is, say, for USAID workers stranded abroad, the implication is chilling: Lawyers who dare to represent a Democrat, or even liberal causes, will be punished, as will their clients. He’s trying to make the cost high enough that firms will turn away clients and cases, rather than risk retribution.
This effort is particularly dangerous in the current moment, when congressional Republicans are rubber stamping Trump’s razing of the federal government and congressional Democrats wield little power (and are ambivalent at best about using what limited leverage they do have). Courts — and the lawyers and firms bringing the cases — have been the most effective check on Trump’s second administration so far.
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