Donald Trump looks on as Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
In a seismic admission of defeat, the Trump administration's Justice Department is abandoning its legal defense of an executive order that would have punished law firms that had represented clients against his prior policies or legal woes.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the DOJ is expected to "drop its appeals of four trial-court rulings that struck down President Trump’s actions against law firms Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, and Susman Godfrey."
Trump's orders had blocked these law firms from doing business with the federal government or from obtaining security clearances. Experts widely criticized it as undermining the centuries-old principle that everyone has a right to legal counsel and that lawyers should not be punished solely for disagreements with their clients.
Several other law firms cut deals with the Trump administration to avoid similar orders punishing them, which included commitments to provide pro bono aid to various causes Trump agrees with and eliminate diversity policies in their offices.
After cutting those deals, however, many of those law firms realized the terms of the agreements were either unenforceable or not what they had believed they were agreeing to, and quietly abandoned them.
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