Despite legal setbacks, the Trump administration appeared to be moving forward with its campaign against elite law firms that have chosen to fight the president’s executive orders that threaten to upend their business.
Two of those firms, WilmerHale and Jenner & Block, notified the courts this week that the Justice Department had recently revoked security clearances held by lawyers on their staff, a move that significantly curtails the types of cases and clients the firms can attract.
The suspension of clearances is just one of the punishing provisions contained in a series of nearly identical executive orders issued by President Trump in March as part of a broader effort to bend the legal community to his will. A number of firms cut deals with Mr. Trump in order to avoid becoming subject to such directives.
The handful of firms that did not make deals — and were then singled out in orders that accused them of working against the country’s national interest — sued, arguing that the orders amount to blatantly illegal retaliation for representing clients and employing lawyers the president opposes politically.
In at least one instance, a federal judge has agreed, bypassing a trial and permanently blocking the government from enforcing the terms of an order targeting the firm Perkins Coie. In the cases involving WilmerHale and Jenner & Block, judges have temporarily halted the Trump administration from implementing the orders aimed at them while litigation plays out.
Even so, Paul Clement, a lawyer for WilmerHale, said in a filing that two of its lawyers had received letters informing them that their security clearances had been suspended.
“This development underscores that the executive branch stands ready and willing to implement the executive order absent judicial intervention,” Mr. Clement wrote in a notice dated May 9.
A lawyer for Jenner & Block filed a similar notice dated May 14 indicating that it had just learned one of its attorneys had their clearance suspended, as well.
Mr. Trump’s executive orders directed agencies to essentially exile the firms from any work that runs through the federal government, such as by barring their attorneys from entering federal buildings, blacklisting them from federal contracts and taking away any security clearances held by their staff.
As justification, the orders cited the fact that both firms had employed top members of the special unit that investigated Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and the question of whether Mr. Trump had worked to obstruct that investigation. They specifically named Robert S. Mueller III and Andrew Weissmann, who returned to those firms in the years after the investigation wound down. Both left in 2021, as lawyers for the firms have noted.
Both firms have asked the respective judges in their cases to skip past a trial and decide the relatively straightforward question of whether Mr. Trump’s orders are legal and should be allowed to stand.
Their cases are essentially identical in nature to those brought by other firms that found themselves in a similar position, such as Perkins Coie and Susman Godfrey. When Perkins Coie received its final ruling from a judge earlier this month, the answer to whether the president’s order was lawful was an emphatic no.
The ruling, from Judge Beryl A. Howell of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, compared the president’s order to an attempt by a populist mob to destabilize society by rooting out the legal opposition in Shakespeare’s play “Henry VI.”
Judge Howell’s ruling also showed deep disdain for the firms that had cut deals with Mr. Trump to avoid retribution.
Nine firms, including Paul Weiss; Rifkind; Wharton & Garrison; and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom preemptively offered to take on millions of dollars in free work for largely uncontroversial causes, collectively approaching nearly $1 billion.
But after extracting those deals, the White House moved to consider even more intrusive terms, including enlisting them in legal fights to further Mr. Trump’s agenda.
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the U.S. Department of Education, the White House and federal courts.
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