<
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-law-firms-accountability-environment-police-lgbtq>
"Two weeks into President Donald Trump’s second presidency, and just days after
he pardoned hundreds of Capitol rioters, officials Trump had placed in charge
of the Justice Department made a sweeping demand. They wanted the names of the
thousands of FBI employees who had played a role in investigating the Jan. 6,
2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Fearing mass firings, or worse, retaliation by the people they helped
prosecute, a group of agents scrambled to enlist a legal team who could stop
the administration in court. Norm Eisen, a prominent ethics lawyer now leading
dozens of lawsuits against the Trump administration, agreed within hours to
represent the agents pro bono, along with Mark Zaid, a veteran whistleblower
attorney. For more firepower, the two approached the giant Chicago-based law
firm Winston & Strawn, which has a history of providing free representation to
people and organizations that squared off against Trump’s first administration.
But Winston declined to represent the FBI agents, three people with knowledge
of the matter said. It was one of several cases Winston turned down in quick
succession, they added, that would have pitted the firm against an openly
retributive president.
Some of the country’s largest law firms have declined to represent clients
challenging the Trump administration, more than a dozen attorneys and nonprofit
leaders told
ProPublica, while others have sought to avoid any clients that
Trump might perceive as his enemies. That includes both clients willing to pay
the firms’ steep rates, and those who receive free representation. Big Law
firms are also refusing to take on legal work involving environmental
protections, LGBTQ+ rights and police accountability or to represent elected
Democrats and federal workers purged in Trump’s war on the “deep state.”
Advocacy groups say this is beginning to hamper their efforts to challenge the
Trump administration.
Their fears intensified after Trump signed a battery of executive orders aimed
at punishing top firms over old associations with his adversaries. But as the
Winston episode shows, Big Law began to back away from some clients almost the
minute he returned to power. The country’s top firms remain deeply wary, even
though the president has lost all four initial court challenges to those
executive orders.
“The President’s Policy is working as designed,” said a lawsuit the American
Bar Association filed against the administration in June. “Even as federal
judges have ruled over and over that the Law Firm Orders are plainly
unconstitutional, law firms that once proudly contributed thousands of hours of
pro bono work to a host of causes — including causes championed by the ABA —
have withdrawn from such work because it is disfavored by the Administration.”"
Via
TechDirt:
<
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/08/08/trumps-war-on-big-law-means-its-harder-to-challenge-the-administration/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
