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The order, which Trump signed last week, was designed to punish
Perkins Coie by suspending the security clearances of the firm's
lawyers as well as denying firm employees access to federal
buildings and terminating their federal contracts.
It was the latest retributive action taken by Trump against the
legal community, coming soon after an earlier order that
targeted security clearances of lawyers at a separate law firm
who have provided legal services to special counsel Jack Smith,
who led criminal investigations into the Republican before his
second term.
Perkins Coie represented the 2016 presidential campaign of
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Trump's opponent, and also
represented Democrats in a variety of voting rights challenges
during the 2020 election. The firm made headlines in 2017 when
it was revealed to have hired a private investigative research
firm during the 2016 campaign to conduct opposition research on
Trump. That firm, Fusion GPS, subsequently retained a former
British spy, Christopher Steele, who researched whether Trump
and Russia had suspicious ties.
Lawyers representing Perkins Coie said in their lawsuit, filed
in federal court in Washington, that the executive order was an
illegal act of retaliation. They called on a judge to block it
from being implemented. A hearing was set for Wednesday
afternoon.
The lawsuit notes that the two primary attorneys whose work
appears to have most angered Trump left the firm years ago and
accounted for a tiny fraction of the firm's more than 1,200
attorneys. They said the order had already hurt the firm's
revenue and bottom line, noting that some clients of clients
have “terminated their engagements" over the last week, and
illegally discriminated against the firm based on viewpoint.
“The Order is an affront to the Constitution and our adversarial
system of justice. Its plain purpose is to bully those who
advocate points of view that the President perceives as adverse
to the views of his Administration, whether those views are
presented on behalf of paying or pro bono clients,” the lawsuit
states.
Trump had sued the law firm in 2022, along with Clinton, FBI
officials and other defendants, as a part of a sprawling
complaint alleging a massive conspiracy to concoct the Russia
investigation that shadowed much of his administration. The suit
was dismissed.
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