President Trump on Thursday directed his sons to fire an outside ethics counsel for the family business because the lawyer also represents Harvard University, one of Mr. Trump’s targets in his crackdown on the nation’s top colleges.
In a social media post, Mr. Trump said the lawyer, William A. Burck, should go because of his ties to Harvard. The university sued the Trump administration after it threatened to slash billions in funding unless the school complied with a list of demands.
“Harvard is a threat to Democracy, with a lawyer, who represents me, who should therefore be forced to resign, immediately, or be fired,” Mr. Trump wrote about Mr. Burck, a comanaging partner at the firm Quinn Emanuel. “He’s not that good, anyway, and I hope that my very big and beautiful company, now run by my sons, gets rid of him ASAP!”
In a statement, one of the sons, Eric Trump, confirmed that the Trump Organization intended to cut ties to Mr. Burck over his decision to represent Harvard.
“I view it as a conflict, and I will be moving in a different direction,” he said.
Mr. Burck declined to comment.
The move underscored not just the entanglements between the Trump presidency and his private company but also the degree to which Mr. Trump will look to target people he believes have wronged him.
Mr. Burck, a former federal prosecutor and veteran lawyer in Washington, represented a number of Trump administration officials in the special counsel investigation into possible ties between the campaign and Russia in Mr. Trump’s first term.
In Mr. Trump’s second term, Mr. Burck has also worked on behalf of a law firm that Mr. Trump wanted to punish because one of its former lawyers, Mark F. Pomerantz, had pushed to prosecute Mr. Trump in New York City. Mr. Burck helped negotiate a deal between that firm and the White House in which the firm, Paul Weiss, agreed to $40 million in pro bono legal work for causes the administration supports.
In the weeks leading up to Mr. Trump’s second inauguration, the Trump Organization retained Mr. Burck as part of a broader plan to advise the firm as it assessed potential new business deals. The Trump Organization said it would forgo new deals with foreign governments and that Mr. Burck would counsel officials on potential ethical dilemmas. In a social media post by Eric Trump at the time, a company news release described Mr. Burck as among the “nation’s finest and most respected lawyers.”
When Mr. Burck decided to also take on Harvard as a client, he did not seek Mr. Trump’s company’s blessing, according to people with knowledge of the matter. While it is unclear whether he had a legal conflict — he represents the company, not the Trump White House — his decision to take part in a lawsuit against the Trump administration arguably presented a problem that was likely to upset Mr. Trump.
“That’s actually good for him; he should be happy to be fired,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics expert and professor emeritus at New York University. “This is not a position a lawyer wants to be in.”
“I think he did have a conflict,” Mr. Gillers added, saying it’s “prudent” for him to be out of the situation.
Mr. Burck’s firm, Quinn Emanuel, has had other matters involving clients with issues before the current federal government. Mr. Burck accompanied his colleague, Alex Spiro, to a meeting with the Justice Department as Mr. Spiro was arguing that corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York should be dropped.
The firm has been named as providing representation for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, an undocumented immigrant who had been living in Maryland for years and who the Justice Department has acknowledged was mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.
Ben Protess is an investigative reporter at The Times, covering President Trump.
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