Donald Trump wants to, and is working to, destroy the rule of law
Attn, BigLaw: There will be no law firm business to save if Trump succeeds. Also: DOJ is planning Second Amendment litigation. And, for paid subscribers: Closing my tabs.
President Donald Trump does not like being constrained, by laws, norms, or anyone else. That has been known for a long time, since long before he was elected president in 2016.
“[W]hen you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump infamously told Billy Bush in 2005.
Now in his second term in office and nearly 20 years later, Trump has not changed. In fact, he has clearly expanded his vision and is now seeking to apply his “anything goes” amorality to the presidency.
The problem with being a man who thinks he can do everything is that — in this country, for now — people can and do tell you that you’re wrong and that restrictions apply to you as well.
Trump does not like that.
In the wake of Chief Justice John Roberts’s 2024 decision for the U.S. Supreme Court holding that Trump has lifetime immunity from criminal prosecution for many — if not all — official presidential acts, Trump appears to feel empowered to act more aggressively and lawlessly this term.
More than that, he also is acting to dismantle, diminish, and demean those institutions, entities, and people left opposing him.
Over the past four weeks, Trump has taken increasingly disturbing actions each week to undermine lawyers who have been willing to oppose him — or even just defend people who have different views than him. In that time, Trump and allies have also gone after, with increasing vitriol, judges who have ruled against his new administration’s overreaching acts.
Looked at clearly, there can be little doubt: Donald Trump wants to, and is working to, destroy the rule of law.
In the course of a month, Trump went from pulling the security clearances of a few lawyers at a firm and reviewing their government contracts to issuing a broad threat to all lawyers that the Trump administration doesn’t like all these lawsuits it is facing and is going retaliate against the lawyers behind them whenever Trump officials decide they don’t like the claims being brought — or even the way they’re being brought.
It is a chilling escalation that is made only more chilling due to the relative silence from the BigLaw world — with a few notable exceptions.
The legal community needs to get its act together. Now.
In contrast to BigLaw’s silence, and setting a strong example for what we should expect from others, 20 civil rights organizations — including the ACLU and NAACP LDF — put out a joint statement on Saturday calling out Trump’s actions as “a dangerous tactic seeking to prevent the legal system from operating as an independent check on government authority.”
There will be no law firm business to save if Trump is allowed to render the law a nullity.
A month ago, on February 25, Trump directed the suspension of security clearances held by lawyers at Covington & Burling “who assisted former Special Counsel Jack Smith during his time as Special Counsel.“ He also directed agency heads to “terminate any engagement of Covington & Burling LLP by any agency to the maximum extent permitted by law” and to “review all Government contracts with Covington & Burling LLP.“ A major BigLaw firm, Covington & Burling has about 1,200 attorneys.
When the entire legal system didn’t rise up in opposition to this retaliatory act by a vengeful president, Trump looked around and assessed the situation: They let him do it.
Knowing that, Trump went after Perkins Coie the next week, on March 6, with a significantly more broad order that included language that could even be read to bar Perkins Coie employees from federal courthouses. Trump’s order was explicitly political — he didn’t even pretend to hide his personal reasons for going after the firm:
When Perkins Coie — another BigLaw firm with about 1,000 attorneys — fought back, sued, and won a temporary restraining order against enforcement of multiple provisions in the order, Trump and, ultimately, the Justice Department — which Attorney General Pam Bondi has made clear exists to advance Trump’s aims — went after the judge. Two of Bondi’s political appointees filed a motion on Friday calling of Howell to recuse herself from the case. Signed by Chad Mizelle and Richard Lawson, the filing alleges bias because Howell had ruled in ways Trump dislikes in a handful of cases over time, including this one, and came shortly after the final career DOJ lawyer on the case withdrew from representation.
In the meantime, though, Trump himself kept moving forward with his attacks on law firms. On March 14 — two days after Howell’s order — Trump issued a similar order against Paul Weiss, another BigLaw firm with about 1,000 attorneys.
Attacking Paul Weiss in part for having “brought a pro bono suit against individuals alleged to have participated in the events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, on behalf of the District of Columbia Attorney General,“ Trump used this order to impugn pro bono actions of law firms more broadly:
This time, the firm blinked. As The New York Times reported, Brad Karp — the firm’s chair — went to the White House to negotiate his way out of the order. As would have been obvious to anyone who has been awake at any point over the past decade, Trump declared victory in a way that overstated what Karp believed he had agreed to in his Oval Office meeting. Issuing a new executive order on March 21 revoking the past week’s executive order, Trump stated that “Paul Weiss indicated that it will engage in a remarkable change of course.“
![Section 1. Background. On March 14, 2025, I signed Executive Order 14237 (Addressing Risks from Paul Weiss) to address certain issues related to Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP (Paul Weiss). I noted that “[g]lobal law firms have for years played an outsized role in undermining the judicial process and in the destruction of bedrock American principles.” Paul Weiss is one of many law firms that have participated in this harmful activity. Earlier this week, though, Paul Weiss indicated that it will engage in a remarkable change of course. Specifically, Paul Weiss has acknowledged the wrongdoing of its former partner Mark Pomerantz, and it has agreed to a number of policy changes to promote equality, justice, and the principles that keep our Nation strong, including: adopting a policy of political neutrality with respect to client selection and attorney hiring; taking on a wide range of pro bono matters representing the full political spectrum; committing to merit-based hiring, promotion, and retention, instead of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies; dedicating the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services during my term in office to support causes including assisting our Nation’s veterans, fairness in the justice system, and combating anti-Semitism; and other similar initiatives.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F99e8e751-2d9c-4ac0-bb65-7df242c780c2_1436x830.png "Section 1. Background. On March 14, 2025, I signed Executive Order 14237 (Addressing Risks from Paul Weiss) to address certain issues related to Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP (Paul Weiss). I noted that “[g]lobal law firms have for years played an outsized role in undermining the judicial process and in the destruction of bedrock American principles.” Paul Weiss is one of many law firms that have participated in this harmful activity. Earlier this week, though, Paul Weiss indicated that it will engage in a remarkable change of course. Specifically, Paul Weiss has acknowledged the wrongdoing of its former partner Mark Pomerantz, and it has agreed to a number of policy changes to promote equality, justice, and the principles that keep our Nation strong, including: adopting a policy of political neutrality with respect to client selection and attorney hiring; taking on a wide range of pro bono matters representing the full political spectrum; committing to merit-based hiring, promotion, and retention, instead of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies; dedicating the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services during my term in office to support causes including assisting our Nation’s veterans, fairness in the justice system, and combating anti-Semitism; and other similar initiatives.")
The move is as embarrassing for Karp and Paul Weiss as it dangerous for the rule of law and the nation. Multiple lawyers who reached out to Law Dork in recent days and used to work at Paul Weiss but now work in government or at other firms have cited their concern about the effect of Paul Weiss’s capitulation on the rule of law.
“I am disgusted,” one lawyer who left Paul Weiss to go into government told Law Dork. A former Paul Weiss associate questioned “what kind of hope is there [for] smaller and less established outfits“ if a firm like Paul Weiss caves.
Sure enough, on Friday night — the day after Paul Weiss caved and hours after DOJ moved to disqualify Howell in the Perkins Coie case — Trump, yet again, went further: He issued a directive taking aim at all lawyers who litigate against the federal government.
Citing Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure — the rule the sets forth the basic requirements for lawyers’ behavior in court and procedure for sanctions if those requirements are violated — Trump sent a memorandum to Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, telling them:
He also directed Bondi and Noem to refer attorneys for disciplinary actions where they decide conduct “appears to violate professional conduct rules” and recommend “reassessment of security clearances” and cancellation of contracts where deemed appropriate.
The order is nothing less than an open threat to all law firms that are litigating against the government.
The legal community in America has a greater responsibility now than it has had at any point in most lawyers’ working lives.
Marc Elias, the former Perkins Coie partner and prominent Democratic lawyer who left the firm several years ago to start Elias Law Group, was a named target of the Friday night order.1 Unlike Paul Weiss, here was Elias’s response:
Putting aside for a moment Paul Weiss’s capitulation itself, a paragraph in Karp’s follow-up email sent internally on Sunday and published in full by David Lat says much about how the BigLaw firms whose lawyers so often insist that they are the Leaders of The Profession are failing themselves, the broader legal profession, and America in this moment:
We were hopeful that the legal industry would rally to our side, even though it had not done so in response to executive orders targeting other firms. We had tried to persuade other firms to come out in public support of Covington and Perkins Coie. And we waited for firms to support us in the wake of the President’s executive order targeting Paul, Weiss. Disappointingly, far from support, we learned that certain other firms were seeking to exploit our vulnerabilities by aggressively soliciting our clients and recruiting our attorneys.
Assuming that what Karp wrote here is true, these are not the responses of a community of people who want to preserve the rule of law. They are the responses of people who believe that they will be the ones to find themselves spared from Trump’s vengeance. And they might. For a while.
And yet. The problem is that their actions — their failure to rally to individual firms’ defense or, even now, to rally against Friday’s memorandum — are undermining the legal system in which they operate.
If the legal community — all of its self-appointed leaders — do not call out Trump’s disdain for the rule of law and actions to destroy it, Trump will keep escalating his attacks and eventually these BigLaw firms will be saving themselves for nothing.
What is a law firm if there is no law?
DOJ is planning “Second Amendment rights litigation“
The Justice Department has announced internally that it is planning on “trying anticipated Second Amendment rights litigation” within the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. The information came in a “detail opportunity” — a job posting for a temporary reassignment — seen by Law Dork.
The relevant part of the announcement stated:
The Civil Rights Division (CRT or Division) seeks several attorneys and Professional Administrative Support Staff (PASS) employees to join case teams trying anticipated Second Amendment rights litigation. The cases will be managed by the Office of the Assistant Attorney General and may also be managed by assigned Section managers. The opportunity will be for 120 days, with the option to extend an additional 60 days. This opportunity is open to all CRT employees who currently serve in attorney and PASS positions, other than those currently assigned to the CRM [Criminal] Section.
Harmeet Dhillon is President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Civil Rights Division, but she is not yet confirmed, so it was not immediately clear if this “anticipated … litigation” is part of Dhillon’s plans for the Division; the plans of Attorney General Pam Bondi or one of her underlings; or a plan developed by the acting head of the division, Mac Warner. The announcement also provided no further information on the planned litigation.
Closing my tabs
This Sunday, these are the tabs I am closing:
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