WASHINGTON — A liberal group will launch a media campaign Thursday targeting law firms that reached deals with President Donald Trump to avoid being targeted by executive orders as the deals come under intense scrutiny within the legal community and Trump’s orders face legal inquiries.
“Big law, stop bending the knee,” reads a poster from the “Big Law Cowards” campaign by the liberal nonprofit group Demand Justice. The group says the ads will be wheatpasted strategically around Washington on Thursday near the locations of the firms that have reached deals with the administration. The group will also have a mobile billboard circulating with ads criticizing the firms, along with a broader digital campaign.
The judicial branch is pushing back against other executive orders targeting firms that didn’t reach deals with the Trump administration — and the firms that did make deals are managing both internal and external fallout from their decisions.
At a hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell grilled Justice Department lawyer Richard Lawson about the executive order against Perkins Coie, one of the law firms that refused to reach a deal with the Trump administration and sued it, instead.
Maggie Jo Buchanan, the interim executive director of Demand Justice, told NBC News that her group hoped to highlight the need for the powerful to act in support of the values of the legal profession, defend the rule of law and support American values.
“When you see some of the most powerful law firms in the country, if not the world, unwilling to stand up to the administration when ordinary people are speaking out, we think it’s really important to shine a bright light on that and really show that ordinary people demand that those most powerful speak out against the administration and not bend the knee,” she said.
Nine firms have reached deals with Trump: A&O Shearman; Kirkland; Latham & Watkins; Simpson Thacher; Cadwalader; Milbank; Skadden; Willkie; and Paul Weiss. The Demand Justice campaign will highlight those firms and the amounts they have pledged in free legal work, which total nearly $1 billion.
Buchanan said that law firm employees who decided to walk away from their positions at those firms had shown “real bravery” and that it was important to highlight those who took a bold stance.
“It takes a lot to walk away from a very lucrative position,” she said. “But I think what we’re really seeing is people sticking by their principles and being willing to speak out, not only against their employer, their former employer, but really stand up for the rule of law.”
Rachel Cohen, a former associate at Skadden who quit in protest last month before the firm reached a deal, told NBC News that the response to her decision to speak out has been “overwhelming” and that resignations from other firms have continued to roll in, including those of some people who chose to leave their firms quietly. Cohen said she hopes partners at the firms that reached deals will reverse course.
“You have a bunch of decision-makers who are so used to being right or at least being told that they’re right that they’re going to be very reluctant to do what’s necessary in order to win on this, which is change course on this and to admit that they messed up,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is battling in court over its targeting of other firms. Before Wednesday’s hearing on Perkins Coie, Trump took to social media and criticized Howell, the judge in the case (though he wrongly claimed he filed the lawsuit, when it was Perkins Coie that took that action).
Lawson, the Justice Department lawyer in the case, came in for criticism from Howell for not having what she described as “pretty basic” information about the deals other law firms had reached. Lawson answered her questions with phrases like “I don’t have any insight” or said he wasn’t “privy to the details of these agreements, so I can’t say one way or the other.”
Howell also said the Justice Department and the Office of Management and Budget threw the equivalent of “a temper tantrum” when they added extra language to a court-ordered message about her previous temporary restraining order to executive agencies. Attorney General Pam Bondi and OMB Director Russell Vought wrote that the government “reserves the right to take all necessary and legal actions in response to the ‘dishonest and dangerous’ conduct of Perkins Coie LLP, as set forth in Executive Order 14230.”
“It struck me as a temper tantrum of the Justice Department and OMB,” Howell said. “It’s worthy of a 3-year-old, not the DOJ.”
When Howell asked whether the president’s targeting firms over their representation was a throwback to McCarthyism and the “Red Scare” era, Lawson said it wasn’t. That was because there was individual review, he said, although he couldn’t provide any details about how the individualized review would proceed, including what stage it was at and what parts of the government were conducting it.
Dane Butswinkas, an attorney at Williams & Connolly who is representing Perkins Coie, said some of the government’s arguments suggesting Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms were more than an act of vengeance — they were “a complete ruse” and “a sham.”
“We don’t have to check our common sense like it’s a hat at the door when we come into the courthouse,” Butswinkas said. “Saying it doesn’t make it so.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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