Covington & Burling, the white-shoe Washington-based firm, was first to be targeted by the president. Its offense: having provided pro bono legal work for Jack Smith, who led the federal prosecution against Mr. Trump for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. On Feb. 25, Mr. Trump issued an executive order that suspended the security clearances of Covington lawyers who had anything to do with Mr. Smith’s representation and directed federal agencies to end any business with the firm. The firm has had virtually nothing to say in response.
Perkins Coie likewise attracted Mr. Trump’s ire for having represented Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign. He ordered a review for any government contracts with the firm, while also effectively barring its lawyers from federal buildings and stripping them of security clearances — potentially disabling sanctions for a firm whose clients have included major defense contractors like Boeing, Microsoft and Northrop Grumman. To its credit, Perkins Coie decided to mount a defense, and turned to Quinn Emmanuel, an equally prestigious Los Angeles-based firm, to lead it. According to a Times report, Quinn Emmanuel balked. (The firm Williams and Connelly has taken the case.) Since then, other firms have reportedly declined to sign an amicus brief on Perkins Coie’s behalf.
Most stunning of all, Paul, Weiss, one of the most venerable firms in the world, elected last week to strike a deal with Mr. Trump, agreeing, among other things, to contribute tens of millions of dollars worth of pro bono services to some of the president’s favored causes. The firm’s chair later explained it did so because clients were getting spooked and other firms — rather than rallying to Paul, Weiss’s defense — began “aggressively soliciting our clients and recruiting our attorneys.”
The choice by these firms to accommodate Mr. Trump’s attacks, either through action or silence, is deeply wrong. It weakens the rule-of-law system on which all Americans depend — a system in which the rules are publicly known and set in advance, not subject to the whims of arbitrary vendettas. It equally hastens America’s slide from a system of constitutional democracy, in which executive power is constrained by multiple independent institutions, to a regime of fiat akin to those authoritarian governments our country has long stood against.
The choice is misguided as a business strategy, too, compromising attorney ethics, which can expose them to discipline by bar associations and courts, and giving clients ample reason to doubt that the firms will act unflinchingly in their defense. Above all, it is futile, as it will do nothing to protect the firms from the extortion-based governance we now appear to face for at least the next four years.
