A new memo from President Donald Trump that authorized the attorney general and the homeland security secretary to sanction law firms that file lawsuits they deem “frivolous” is a major escalation of his intensifying assault on law firms, legal experts and former Justice Department officials told NBC News.
The presidential memorandum, “Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court,” also ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to recommend revoking attorneys’ security clearances or terminating law firms’ federal contracts if she deems their lawsuits against the administration “unreasonable” or “vexatious.”
The memo, which was issued Saturday, follows executive orders against three firms: Covington & Burling, which provided pro bono legal services to former special counsel Jack Smith, who secured an indictment against Trump; Perkins Coie, which represented Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and worked with an opposition research firm that compiled a discredited dossier against Trump; and Paul Weiss, where a former firm partner, Mark Pomerantz, tried to build a criminal case against Trump while he was working at the Manhattan district attorney’s office several years ago.
The executive orders suspended the security clearances of the firms’ employees and barred them from some federal buildings, steps that would make it difficult for them to represent clients.
Most important, the orders said the federal contracts of the law firms’ clients should be reviewed, as well. Brad Karp, the Paul Weiss chair who was criticized for striking a deal with Trump last week, cited that threat in a message to employees that leaked soon after he sent it.
“The executive order could easily have destroyed our firm,” Karp wrote. “In particular, it threatened our clients with the loss of their government contracts, and the loss of access to the government, if they continued to use the firm as their lawyers.”
Trump ally Steve Bannon said last week that Trump’s goal is to bankrupt the firms the administration perceives as enemies.
“He’s going to put those law firms out of business,” Bannon said. “What we are trying to do is put you out of business and bankrupt you.”
A group of 22 civil rights organizations — including the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union — condemned the new memorandum in a statement. They contended that it was intended to “chill dissent, avoid accountability, and weaponize the government to attack opponents of this administration and its lawless actions.”
White House officials defended the move.
“President Trump is delivering on his promise to ensure the judicial system is no longer weaponized against the American people. President Trump’s only retribution is success and historic achievements for the American people,” assistant White House press secretary Taylor Rogers said in a statement to news organizations.
David Laufman, a former head of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence section who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, called the use of executive branch power to intimidate law firms and lawyers unprecedented.
“If anyone, in any previous White House in the modern era, had ever hatched such an authoritarian plan to silence and punish the legal profession, the Attorney General and White House Counsel would have quietly intervened and the plan quickly would have been shelved,” he said by text message.
Spokespersons for the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A former senior Justice Department official called the move autocratic.
“The president does not appreciate how an adversarial legal system works and the role of an impartial judge in that process,” said the former official, who requested anonymity because of concerns about retaliation.
“That is the best way to expose weak evidence and flawed arguments,” he added. “The president rejects that system in favor of one in which he wins and his adversaries lose and are punished. That is not justice; that is autocracy.”
Legal experts also accused Trump of hypocrisy, noting that his own lawyers have violated Rule 11 of the federal rules of civil procedure, which bar lawyers from making false or frivolous claims in court.
The former senior Justice Department official said Trump’s legal claims that Joe Biden had won key swing states in 2020 by submitting fraudulent ballots “utterly failed to meet the Rule 11 standards that Trump cited in his memorandum.”
Last year, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Sidney Powell and other Trump lawyers who were ordered to pay $150,000 in sanctions for filing a lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results in Michigan. Powell also pleaded guilty in Georgia to state criminal charges relating to her efforts to overturn Trump’s loss there.
A senior lawyer at a law firm that has sued the administration said the stakes are clear.
“He’s chilling the very sector of society that stands between Trump and tyranny,” the lawyer said. “Lawyers file lawsuits and they get rulings that adjudicate whether what the administration has done is constitutional or not. And that’s our system of government.
“I don’t think the gravity of this can be overstated,” added the lawyer, a former federal prosecutor. “Law firms like this are a check. And if no one is bringing things to the courts, nothing will be stopped.”
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