As many as seven partners are departing Willkie Farr & Gallagher, a prominent law firm that cut a deal with President Trump to head off a potentially crippling executive order, and are joining a firm that has helped successfully challenge one of Mr. Trump’s orders in court, according to three people briefed on the matter.
The decision by the partners, who are leaving Willkie Farr to join the law firm Cooley, is the latest of several high profile departures of lawyers from firms that cut deals with the president.
Cooley represented Jenner & Block in that firm’s legal efforts to challenge an executive order rather than settle with the president. Last month, a federal judge struck down the executive order against Jenner, saying it was “doubly violative of the Constitution.”
Two of the partners leaving Willkie led its San Francisco office: Benedict Y. Hur and Simona Agnolucci, who served as a member of the firm’s executive committee. Both are litigators and have told others they were extremely disappointed that the firm capitulated to Mr. Trump, according to one of the people briefed on the matter.
Representatives for Willkie and Cooley could not be immediately reached for comment.
Willkie was a target for Mr. Trump’s team primarily because it employed a top investigator for the congressional committee that investigated Mr. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a mob of his supporters, according to a person close to the president. The firm also did work on behalf of two Georgia election workers who had successfully sued Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, joined Willkie shortly after Mr. Trump was sworn in. Mr. Emhoff, who has told others he was making $6 million a year at the firm, opposed the deal, but has remained at the firm.
In March, when Mr. Trump began targeting the legal industry with executive orders, few firms were willing to speak out against the orders, which essentially barred the firms’ lawyers from entering federal buildings and representing their clients before the federal government.
But the deals cut by the law firms to avoid the orders have since been widely criticized within the legal community. As part of their deals with the White House, the firms have agreed to perform hundreds of millions of dollars of pro bono legal work on causes that the administration supports.
The Willke lawyers jumping to Cooley is the latest reshuffling amid the fallout from the executive orders. In just the past month, six top partners at the law firm Paul Weiss, the first firm to cut a deal with Mr. Trump, decided to leave. Four of them started their own law firm, while another joined one of the other firms that has successfully fought Mr. Trump in court.
Michael S. Schmidt is an investigative reporter for The Times covering Washington. His work focuses on tracking and explaining high-profile federal investigations.
Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.
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