The first thing we do, let's kill all the (Democratic) lawyers …
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'This should be terrifying to anybody,' said Boston lawyer Lauren Stiller Rikleen, executive director of Lawyers Defending American Democracy. 'You kill a democracy by killing the infrastructure that protects us all and undermining the rule of law.'
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And so Trump aims to strike at the very heart of this nation's adversarial system of justice, where everyone is entitled to a competent defense.
'We have a lot of law firms that we're going to be going after because they were very dishonest people,' Trump told
Last week Trump signed an
The order targets the firm for 'dishonest and dangerous activity,' namely its 2016 representation of 'failed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton' and its role in the hiring of Fusion GPS, the source for what became known as the
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That executive order was followed, about a week later, by another order directed against
The order also terminated security clearances for anyone involved in the firm and ordered the termination of any government agreements with the firm 'to the maximum extent permitted by law.'
The order against Perkins Coie represents an escalation in Trump's war on Big Law, proposing what amounts to a secondary boycott by the federal government of its clients. The firm represents such government contractors as T-Mobile, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing, according to its
A spokesperson for the firm labeled the executive order '
The grounds for fighting back may be many and varied — from procedural (say a lack of notice for lifting those security clearances) to constitutional — a violation of the First Amendment's free speech guarantees or the Fifth Amendment's due process clause.
With such high-powered clients at stake (Perkins Coie, founded in Seattle, has represented Boeing since the aircraft maker's founding), the firm left no time in hiring another high-powered law firm, Williams & Connolly, to fight this particular battle with the White House, as it pledged to do.
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The
That's just the chilling effect the Trump administration has been looking for.
'Lawyers must be free to represent clients and perform their ethical duty without fear of retribution,' American Bar Association President William R. Bay said in a
Sure, there is no shortage of lawsuits being waged against the Trump administration already — the number now stands at 114, according to the
'We've never seen anything like this before,' Rikleen said.
Noting that even John Adams had represented the British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre, she added, 'What we're seeing is punishment by the president of the United States of lawyers for who they represent. This could happen to any of us at any time.'
No one is going to have to pass the hat for either of these prestigious law firms any time soon. But that doesn't mean their persecution isn't important. It is.
And as Rikleen told the editorial board, it's a move right out of the autocrats' playbook — attacking the courts, the media, and the legal community, sowing distrust.
For Trump it's all about payback. For the American public those attacks and those executive orders represent a dagger to the heart of democracy. That's a fight worth fighting.
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