Donald Trump Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop, Retaliating Against Anyone Who Resisted His Lies About the 2020 Election

In case you have any doubts, Donald Trump is still mad about 2020. On Wednesday, he announced he was targeting Susman Godfrey, the New York–based firm that represented Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation suit against Fox News. That dispute, if you needed a refresher, over whether the network and its parent company knowingly broadcasted baseless conspiracies about Dominion being involved in a plot to steal the 2020 election, ended with the news outlet settling the case in 2023 for $787.5 million. The president signed an executive order that would immediately suspend security clearances for employees of Susman Godfrey LLP and told reporters, during the signing, “There were some very bad things that happened with these law firms.”

Also apparently on the president’s 2020 hitlist: former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Chris Krebs, whose rejection of Trump’s voter fraud claims during the 2020 election pushed him out of his position, and Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor, who anonymously wrote a 2018 New York Times op-ed claiming he was part of the “resistance” inside the Trump administration. The executive order strips Taylor and Krebs of any remaining security clearance they may hold since leaving office and calls for Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to probe both former officials. “I think what he did, and he wrote a book, ‘Anonymous,’ said all sorts of lies, bad things– and I think it’s, I think it’s like a traitor, like, it’s like spying,” Trump stated. “I think it’s a very important case, and I think he’s guilty of treason if you want to know the truth, but we’ll find out.”

Taylor responded to the president on X, noting that the president had “inelegantly” proved his point: “Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path.” Susman Godfrey also responded to Trump’s executive order, affirming that the firm would put up a challenge: “Anyone who knows Susman Godfrey knows we believe in the rule of law, and we take seriously our duty to uphold it. This principle guides us now. There is no question that we will fight this unconstitutional order.”

The orders arrived as Steven Banks, leader of the pro bono practice at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, announced his resignation—just weeks after the elite firm struck a deal with Trump to evade an executive order that hindered its ability to represent clients before the federal government. In March, Trump handed down a directive aimed at lawyers and firms he perceived were engaging in “frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States.” The responses to the administration’s focus on dissidence in the legal sphere have run the gambit. Some are in league with Susman Godfrey, like WilmerHale and Perkins Coie, refusing to bow while others, including Paul Weiss, have conceded.

Banks doesn’t attribute his move directly to the deal struck with Trump. “This has been weighing on me since the November election,” Banks said in a statement. “At this historical moment, I know that I belong back on the front lines fighting for the things that I have believed in since I first walked in the door of The Legal Aid Society as a staff attorney in 1981.”