'Bloodbath': Lawyer watches as judge hits back at Trump's DOJ in hearing

The Justice Department appeared in a Washington, D.C. court on Wednesday to defend President Donald Trump's executive order attacking the law firm Perkins Coie.

The law firm sued Trump and appeared before U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell, who had several questions for the government lawyer that he struggled to answer.

Perkins Coie represented the 2016 campaign of Trump's former presidential rival, Hillary Clinton. The firm hired another firm that helped create the dossier on Trump's ties to Russia, as the New York Times explained after the order in March.

Reporting on the hearing, public interest, tech and media lawyer Kendra Albert, from the firm Albert Sellers, provided a running thread on Bluesky regarding the back and forth.

The DOJ's Richard Lawson was asked numerous questions by Judge Howell, only to respond that he was either unprepared to answer or didn't know the answers.

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Among the questions from the judge was about Truth Social posts by Trump. Howell asked why the firm was targeted. She also questioned whether Perkins Coie agreed to a "deal" with Trump, but then represented a political candidate in opposition to Trump; would their deal be voided?

Lawson didn't know.

Howell then asked whether Trump could bring back the threat of an executive order if Perkins Coie represents a candidate Trump doesn't approve of.

"Or can he just do that anyway?" she asked, according to Albert.

Lawson didn't know that answer either, confessing, "I wasn't prepared for this."

The judge noted that such a detail was included in the statement of facts and the exhibits submitted by the plaintiff.

"Do you think it's not important?" Howell asked, as Albert recorded.

Lawson responded, "I wasn't prepared to talk about the granularity of these agreements."

"Well, I think not knowing whether they are written down at all is not really granularity," the judge clapped back.

"This is a bloodbath," Albert said as an aside. He added, "She's clearly not pleased."

See the full thread here.