WASHINGTON — The executive order against one of the country's most prestigious law firms followed a well-worn template as President Donald Trump roared down the road to retribution.
Reaching far beyond government, Trump has set out to impose his will across a broad swath of American life, from individuals who have been targeted to institutions known for their own flexes of power and intimidation.
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport on March 28 in West Palm Beach, Fla.
Paul Weiss, a New York law firm born in 1875, got the word that it was in trouble.
Trump ordered that federal security clearances of Paul Weiss attorneys be reviewed for suspension, federal contracts terminated and employee access to federal buildings restricted. One of its former lawyers once investigated Trump as a Manhattan prosecutor.
The decree was averted in the most Trumpian of ways — with a deal.
People are also reading…
After a White House meeting with the firm's chairman yielded various commitments, including $40 million worth of legal work to support the administration's causes, the order was rescinded.
The episode showed not only Trump's aggressive use of the power of the presidency to police dissent and punish adversaries but also his success in extracting concessions from law firms, academia, Silicon Valley, corporate boardrooms and more.
Just one day after Paul Weiss' deal, Columbia University disclosed major policy changes at the risk of losing billions in federal money. Before that, ABC News and Meta reached multimillion-dollar settlements to resolve lawsuits from Trump.
“The more of them that cave, the more extortion that that invites,” said Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer in Trump’s first term and now a critic. “You’ll see other universities and other law firms and other enemies of Trump assaulted and attacked into submission because of that."
Some within the conservative legal community, by contrast, think Trump is operating within his rights.
Other targets have taken the opposite tack, with two different law firms since the Paul Weiss deal suing over the executive orders. Judges on March 28 temporarily blocked enforcement of key sections of those orders against Jenner & Block and WilmerHale.
If the submissions have been surprising, then Trump's interest in reprisal was less so, telegraphed as it was during the campaign. “I am your retribution,” he told supporters in March 2023.
But retribution for what, exactly? Against whom? How?
The answers would come soon.
Fresh off four federal and state indictments that threatened his political career, Trump came immediately for the prosecutors who investigated him and the law firms he saw as sheltering them.
Out went members of special counsel Jack Smith's team and some prosecutors who handled cases arising from the Jan. 6 riot.
Then an executive order stripped security clearances from lawyers from Covington & Burling who provided legal representation for Smith himself during the threat of government investigations.
A subsequent order punished Perkins Coie for representing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.
Its business in the balance, Perkins Coie hired Williams Connolly, a firm with an aggressive litigation style, to contest the order. A federal judge said the administration’s action sent “chills down my spine" and blocked portions of it. The decision could have been a precedent for other firms to rely on.
The Paul Weiss chairman said it, too, initially intended to sue over the order that targeted the firm in part because former partner Mark Pomerantz had several years earlier overseen an investigation into Trump’s finances for the Manhattan district attorney. But even a courtroom victory wouldn't erase clients' perception that it was “persona non grata” with the administration, according to an internal email from the firm's chairman, Brad Karp.
Support from fellow firms never materialized and some even sought to exploit Paul Weiss' woes, Karp said.
When the opportunity came to cut a deal in a White House meeting, he took it, pledging free legal services for causes Trump supports, like the fight against antisemitism.
The outcry was swift. Lawyers outside the firm ridiculed what they saw as a weak-kneed response. More than 140 alumni of the firm assailed the capitulation in a letter.
Within days, Jenner & Block and WilmerHale were hit with executive orders over their affiliation with prosecutors on Robert Mueller’s special counsel team that investigated him during his first term. Both sued and got orders blocking sections of the edicts. Trump, meanwhile, has unleashed a new directive to sanction any lawyer who brings “frivolous” litigation against the government.
“I just think,” Trump said, “that law firms need to behave themselves.”
On Tuesday, the White House said it had reached a deal with another major international law firm, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, to dedicate at least $100 million in free legal services to causes such as supporting veterans and combating antisemitism. Under the agreement, Willkie also agreed to disavow the use of equity, diversity and inclusion considerations in its hiring decisions.
The deal was reached just two days after leaders at Willkie learned that the White House intended to issue a executive order against the firm, an action that could have carried "potentially grave consequences," according to an internal email from the firm's executive committee obtained by The Associated Press.
Willkie is home to Doug Emhoff, the husband of 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, and Timothy Heaphy, who was chief investigative counsel to the House of Representatives committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. The firm also represented two former Georgia election workers in a successful defamation lawsuit against former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
