Doug Emhoff’s Law Firm Bends the Knee to Trump

Former second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s law firm has cut a deal with the Trump administration, against Emhoff’s wishes—leading to calls from activists for him to resign.

Willkie Farr & Gallagher, where Emhoff is a partner, agreed to provide $100 million in pro bono services for causes the administration supports. The subjects would “represent the full political spectrum, including conservative ideals,” and the firm would also stop engaging in “illegal DEI discrimination and preferences” and choosing clients based on political views, according to a Truth Social post from the president Tuesday.

According to an internal memo, the firm’s executive committee knew that it would be targeted by the administration and believed that taking a deal, which other law firms have also done amid criticism, would be the best way to avoid “potentially grave consequences.”

“We know this news is not welcomed by some of you and you would have urged a different course of action. Needless to say, this was an incredibly difficult decision for Firm leadership,” the memo states.

Trump has used executive orders to target specific law firms in a shakedown attempt, with some, such as Paul, Weiss and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, cutting deals to avoid retribution from the administration. At least one other firm, Perkins Cole, is challenging Trump in court.

Emhoff has been a partner at Willkie Farr since January, following Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat in the 2024 presidential election. Emhoff reportedly told the firm’s leadership on Tuesday before the move that they shouldn’t make a deal with Trump and instead should fight, according to The New York Times.

At an event at Georgetown University Law School Tuesday night, Emhoff alluded to his firm’s decision, saying, “The rule of law is under attack. Democracy is under attack. And so, all of us lawyers need to do what we can to push back on that.” At a time when Trump is ignoring the law at every turn in an effort to increase his power, such resistance is needed by all in America.

If conservatives cared about Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, then they should be up in arms over Mike Waltz.

The national security adviser and his staff have been using Gmail to communicate, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Waltz and one of his senior aides relied on the commercial email service to discuss “sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict,” according to email receipts obtained by the Post.

But Gmail is not a secure platform to do so on. Users effectively sign away their privacy and metadata to Alphabet, Google’s parent company, when they sign up for a Gmail account.

“Every way you interact with your Gmail account can be monitored, such as the dates and times you email at, who you are talking to, and topics you choose to email about,” Rowenna Fielding, founder of privacy consultancy Miss IG Geek, told The Guardian in 2021.

It’s the latest in a growing series of flubs for Waltz, who made Donald Trump furious by accidentally inviting a journalist to a Cabinet group chat on Signal about bombing Yemen last month. Note here: Gmail is even less secure than Signal, which at least is an encrypted communication app.

In the days after the scandal broke, Wired reported that an account sharing the intelligence official’s name had seemingly left his Venmo profile public. In doing so, Waltz disclosed the names of hundreds of his personal and professional associates, including government officials and lobbyists.

And as the scandals pile up, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Waltz’s behavior is more than just a string of isolated mistakes—instead, they suggest a pattern of haphazard carelessness from an individual who should be one of America’s foremost security experts.

Last week, the German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that several senior administration officials had their personal data—including account passwords, cell phone numbers, and email addresses—listed online.

Some of the compromised Cabinet members include Waltz, as well as National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The foreign publication was able to track down their information via commercial search engines as well as databases composed of hacked customer data.

Clinton was excoriated by the right for using private email servers as opposed to her government issued address. But the American public has seemingly been able to spot the difference, with a majority of people believing that the Signal scandal matters more than Republicans’ scapegoats.

A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released Sunday suggested that 60 percent of polled Americans felt that the administration’s decision to use Signal was “wrong”—that included 73 percent of Democrats, 65 percent of independents, and 43 percent of Republicans.

A YouGov survey published last week found that 53 percent of nearly 6,000 polled Americans felt that the Trump administration’s Signal leak was “very serious,” while another 21 percent described it as “somewhat serious.”

Meanwhile, a survey conducted in the wake of Clinton’s email scandal by YouGov and The Economist in March 2015 found that 30 percent of polled Americans felt that Clinton’s server was “very serious.” Another 26 percent noted that it was “somewhat serious” to them.

A federal judge on Wednesday permanently dismissed the corruption case against embattled New York City Mayor Eric Adams, absolving him of his crimes while ensuring that his case will never be brought up again—eliminating any leverage that the Trump administration may have had over the mayor, who quickly capitulated to Trump and the MAGA agenda earlier this year in the hopes of a pardon.

Adams was indicted in September on charges of wire fraud, bribery, conspiracy, and soliciting campaign donations from Turkish officials. He pleaded not guilty and is up for reelection this November.

Trump’s Department of Justice had asked the case to be dismissed without prejudice, meaning the charges could be reinstated in the future. Judge Dale E. Ho of Manhattan refused, dismissing the case with prejudice so that going forward, the charges in the indictment cannot be used as leverage.

Ho also noted that he wanted to minimize the likelihood of Adams being bribed with freedom by the Trump administration.

“In light of DOJ’s rationales, dismissing the case without prejudice would create the unavoidable perception that the Mayor’s freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the administration, and that he might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents,” Ho wrote.

When Attorney General Emil Bove ordered state prosecutors to drop the charges against Adams in February, the request was for a dismissal without prejudice, setting up a blatant quid pro quo dynamic that led to multiple staff resignations in protest.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump has been looking at how to be president for a third term since at least October 2023.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Boris Ephsteyn, who worked in the White House in Trump’s first term and is now one of his personal attorneys, made the unfounded claim back then, during a meeting with an associate, that based on the law, he believed that Trump could run again in 2028.

Trump has asserted in recent weeks that he is “not joking” about staying in office past January 2029, when his second and final term is up, claiming that there are certain plans that would enable him to do so. Other White House officials are claiming it’s a nonissue, such as Karoline Leavitt last week, but only days later Trump contradicted her.

Others in the Trump orbit, such as Steve Bannon, think there’s merit in the idea, and some senior Republicans told the Journal that they believe him. Unnamed sources told the Journal that they see the lack of resistance from law firms, corporations, universities, and Congress as showing that he has the potential to bulldoze resistance to staying in office.

The Constitution bars presidents from being elected to more than two terms. Republican Representative Andy Ogles has introduced legislation to amend the Constitution to allow presidents to serve a third term if one is nonconsecutive. It would be a tall order, as a constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds vote from both the House and Senate, and ratification by three-fourths of the states. But Trump, unfortunately, has often found a way to get around checks to his power.

Elon Musk is on X trying to convince everyone that it was voter ID—and not the state Supreme Court race that he spent millions on—that mattered most, after conservative Judge Brad Schimel lost in Wisconsin to liberal Judge Susan Crawford on Monday night. 

“This was the most important thing,” the world’s richest man posted over the passing of Wisconsin’s voter ID amendment. This new spin goes against pretty much everything he’s said about the importance of the Supreme Court race since he started dumping time and money into it. 

“A Supreme Court election in Wisconsin might determine the fate of America,” Musk posted on X last Saturday. 

“This Wisconsin Supreme Court race might decide the future of America and Western Civilization!” he wrote on Sunday. “It’s a big deal.”

“Vote for Superjudge Brad Schimel in Wisconsin on Tuesday!! “ he posted, along with a very poorly animated image of Schimel. “The Republican House majority is razor thin and the Democrats want to redraw Wisconsin districts to flip the House and stop the government reforms. Super important to vote for Superjudge!!”

Musk even took his cheerleading offline. 

“The reason tonight’s elections are so important is that the judge race will decide whether the Wisconsin districts get redrawn, they’re gonna try to gerrymander Wisconsin to remove two Republican seats,” Musk said on Fox News Tuesday evening. “The House is currently Republican by a razor-thin margin, which means that losing this judge race has a good chance of causing Republicans to lose control of the House. If you lose control of the House, there will be nonstop impeachment hearings, there will be nonstop hearings and subpoenas … everything possible to stop the agenda that the American people voted for when they voted for President Trump.”  

A lot can change in a night. Now Musk is insisting that he “expected” to lose. “There is value to losing a piece for a positional gain,” he wrote on X at the crack of dawn on Wednesday. 

Musk was relentless in his support of Schimel. He appeared at a large rally wearing a cheesehead, paid canvassers $20 an hour to carry out an all-out door-to-door assault on Wisconsin voters, and handed out two $1 million checks, lottery-style, to people who signed his petition hating on liberal “activist” judges. He spent $25 million in total just to lose the race and pivot to saying that a secondary ballot initiative was actually the real prize. And for what it’s worth, Wisconsin has required voter ID for nearly a decade, it just isn’t a state constitutional amendment. That victory is marginal, at best. Schimel’s loss was a massive rejection of Musk and his infinite war chest.