On Friday, a federal judge blocked President Donald Trump‘s executive order targeting legal firm Susman Godfrey, ruling it was “unconstitutional from beginning to end.”
This is the fourth defeat in court Trump has suffered since imposing punitive measures on a number of law firms that either were involved in legal cases against him or represented his political rivals.
A federal judge on Friday struck down President Trump’s executive order that sought to punish the law firm Susman Godfrey, ruling that it is unconstitutional and blocking the administration from enforcing it.
The decision from U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan caps an unbroken streak of victories for the four major law firms that were targeted by Mr. Trump as part of his efforts to go after his perceived enemies and chose to challenge his directives in court, rather than commit millions of dollars in free legal services, as nine other firms have done.
Law firms like Paul Weiss that bent to the Trump administration’s demands are finding that big-name clients prefer to take their business elsewhere, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
McDonald’s and Oracle are among the growing list of clients choosing to part ways with the appeasing firms. General counsels have concerns about whether these law firms could be trusted to fight it out for them in the courtroom and in negotiations, the Journal reported, when they so easily bent to Trump’s demands.
A federal judge on Friday permanently blocked a White House executive order targeting an elite law firm, dealing a setback to President Donald Trump’s campaign of retribution against the legal profession.
U.S. District Beryl Howell said the executive order against the firm of Perkins Coie amounted to “unconstitutional retaliation” as she ordered that it be nullified and that the Trump administration halt any enforcement of it.
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The ruling was most definitive rejection to date of Trump’s spate of similarly worded executive orders against some of the country’s most elite law firms, part of a broader effort by the president to reshape American civil society by targeting perceived adversaries in hopes of extracting concessions from them and bending them to his will.
A federal judge firmly swatted down a series of arguments from a Department of Justice attorney defending President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting the Jenner & Block LLP law firm at a hearing Monday, at one point uttering an exasperated “Give me a break!”
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Since the beginning of his second term, Trump has issued a series of executive orders targeting by name multiple BigLaw firms that represented prominent Democratic clients like Hillary Clinton, refused to represent him or other pro-MAGA causes, hired former federal prosecutors that investigated him, or worked on the criminal cases he was facing before he won re-election.
The president’s social media posts and executive orders often lambast these firms using language accusing them of being “dishonest” and a “dangerous” risk to national security. The sanctions he has sought to impose include stripping the security clearances of the firms’ attorneys and staff (critically important for certain types of federal legal cases), terminating contracts the firms had with federal agencies, barring the firms’ employees from federal buildings (again, a major obstacle for the lawyers to represent their clients), demanding firms abolish diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and programs, and threatening additional civil and criminal investigations against the firms.
President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he would use the power of the Justice Department to go after two officials who were highly critical of him during his first term in office, including one whose anonymously written New York Times op-ed claiming he was part of the “resistance” to Trump’s presidency captivated the nation for years.
The announcement by Trump that he was targeting former Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor, who penned the op-ed, and former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs, whose rejection of Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election led to his ousting, comes as the president continues to seek retribution on his perceived enemies in ways big and small.
Executive orders signed by Trump on Wednesday strip Taylor and Krebs of any existing security clearance they may still hold since leaving office and orders the Justice Department to probe both former officials.
The president did not specify any alleged wrongdoing by the men that necessitated investigations by the department. But, speaking in the White House, Trump made clear he thinks he knows what the results should be.
“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 said of Taylor. “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.”
King Donald is an illiterate bumpkin who apparently doesn’t even understand how treason is defined in the U.S. Constitution.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/09/politics/trump-critics-executive-orders-taylor-krebs/index.html
