'Wild situation': Trump foes say threats have left lawyers too scared to defend them

President Donald Trump's crackdown on the legal establishment seems to be having the intended effect, according to individuals who say they're struggling to find attorneys to represent them.

Officials who served under former President Joe Biden told the Washington Post that high-profile law firms aren't willing to back them after Trump used executive orders to ban lawyers from public buildings or prohibit companies with federal contracts from employing their services. The president directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to sanction lawyers who “engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation” against his administration.

“It’s scary,” said a former Biden official who needed a lawyer after getting drawn into Trump-era litigation, and the pro-bono attorney they had lined up from a major law firm dropped them as a client after the executive orders.

Five other firms declined that person's case, citing conflicts of interest, but the former official said individual attorneys were not happy with the decisions.

"[A] partner called me livid, furious, saying that he’s not sure how much longer he’s going to stay there because the leadership didn’t want to take the risk," that person said. “I don’t know how many people are going to end up having to pay a significant amount of money out of pocket to defend themselves for faithfully and ethically executing their public service jobs. It’s really a wild situation to be in.”

Lawyers who might otherwise challenge the administration's agenda are now fearful of lawsuits, fines and other punishment against them or their other clients after Trump targeted heavyweight law firms like Paul Weiss, Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling for retribution for their involvement in legal cases and other matters against him.

“You need the legitimacy of law on your side at some level,” said Scott Cummings, a law professor at the UCLA School of Law. “This is the autocratic legal idea of claiming a democratic mandate to attack the rule of law by using law to really erode institutional pillars that are supposed to check executive power.”

Trump's actions are intended to disable effective representation for anyone the president doesn't like, Cummings said, and resembled similar campaigns by autocratic leaders in Russia, Turkey and Hungary.

“This is the livelihood of these lawyers, and the Trump administration is basically saying we’re going to dictate the terms under which you are going to be able to practice your profession,” said Claire Finkelstein, a law professor and the director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania.