Trump Hit With Brutal Double Whammy of Lawsuits in an Hour
Law firms that Donald Trump has targeted are fighting back.

Donald Trump got whacked by two lawsuits Friday from major law firms challenging his executive orders targeting them for defending clients and causes he dislikes or employing lawyers he’s deemed as enemies.
WilmerHale and Jenner & Block both filed suits against the Trump administration over a pair of retaliatory executive orders allegedly “addressing risks” from the two firms, after Trump previously targeted three other firms.
The orders targeting WilmerHale and Jenner & Block claimed that the firms had engaged in “obvious partisan representations” and so-called discrimination “against its employees based on race and other categories prohibited by civil rights laws, including through the use of race-based ‘targets,’” meaning they used DEI hiring practices.
The president threatened to suspend security clearances held by firm members, stop all federal contracts, and bar federal employees from engaging with firm members.
Trump claimed that the firms had committed wrongdoing by simply taking up cases that went against his policy agenda. He alleged that WilmerHale wrongfully defended clients in cases involving race and elections, and that Jenner & Block had supported “attacks against women and children based on a refusal to accept the biological reality of sex.” He alleged that both firms had backed “the obstruction of efforts to prevent illegal aliens from committing horrific crimes and trafficking deadly drugs within our borders,” likely meaning they simply defended clients in immigration cases. Of course, none of this is actually legally wrong, it just presents obstacles to Trump’s agenda.
Trump also attacked WilmerHale for “welcoming” former special counsel Robert Mueller to the firm, and Jenner & Block for re-hiring his associate Andrew Weissmann.
In response, WilmerHale filed a lawsuit against the entire Trump administration, including every department and Cabinet member, alleging that Trump’s executive orders constituted an “unprecedented attack” on the Sixth Amendment right to counsel and were an an “undisguised form of retaliation for representing clients and causes he disfavors or employing lawyers he dislikes.”
“These ‘personal vendetta[s]’ are so facially improper that the first court to address the merits of one of these orders concluded that it likely violates multiple foundational safeguards enshrined in the Bill of Rights,” lawyers for WilmerHale stated in a 63-page filing.
In a statement Thursday, WilmerHale hit back at the ridiculous order, stating that they represented a range of clients “including in matters against administrations from both parties.”
Jenner & Block also filed suit challenging the order. “The Order threatens not only Jenner, but also its clients and the legal system itself,” the firm wrote. “Our Constitution, top to bottom, forbids attempts by the government to punish citizens and lawyers based on the clients they represent, the positions they advocate, the opinions they voice, and the people with whom they associate.”
The law firm Perkins Coie, which was targeted for representing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, challenged a similar order earlier this month and was granted a temporary injunction against the Trump administration’s threat to revoke clearances and access. Another firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, caved to the administration and offered $40 million in free legal services, revoked their own DEI practices, and sold one of their own lawyers down the river, simply because he’d once investigated Trump for alleged financial crimes.
Trump’s latest orders are a bold-faced attempt to make it impossible for individuals to challenge his actions, and policy agenda, by attempting to chill the work of those who would mount their representation.