Bulwark Takes - Trump Is Trying To Crush a Law Firm! What Happened To The Rule Of Law?

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

Sam Stein and Ryan Goodman discuss the executive order going after Perkins Coie LLP and the implications it has against lawyers, law firms and the U.S.

Hey guys, Sam Stein back again. I'm joined by Ryan Goodman of Just Security. We are going to be talking about what I think is a fairly insane and alarming development in the legal world. Ryan can correct me if I'm wrong in that assertion. But but we're kind of sort of still feeling the effects of it. And I think it's had a real chill across legal circles. Last week, the White House issued an executive order saying essentially that a couple of things are going to happen with the firm Perkins Coie, which is a prominent firm based in Seattle, but they have a huge office in D.C. Trump said that he was going to end the clearances, national security clearances for certain lawyers at Perkins Coie, and that he was going to make it so that agencies could not hire the firm. And then the third thing, as I read it, was that he would say government contractors would have to disclose if they were doing business with the firm in a clear hint that that would not be approved. Perkins Coie, again, they have huge clients, Boeing, Microsoft, major government contractors are clients. But the real thing is they do

political work, or they at least had a big political office. And the people who were involved in that political office, two things that, or Trump, and he's been upfront about at least one of them. One was that they're involved in the Fusion GPS Russia dossier that happened in 2016. Trump has never forgiven them or the firm for that. The second one is they employed Mark Elias. And Mark Elias was the major voting rights lawyer on the Democratic side of things. He has since left the firm, I believe, in 2021. So he's not even actually at Perkins Coie. But I think Trump probably retains memory of Mark Elias and anger towards that. You're in these circles. You know these people. Just how big a deal is this in legal circles?

So it's a very big deal. It's totally unprecedented, let alone the idea that this is supercharged in an executive order targeting a particular firm is something that's unprecedented than on steroids. Because it's really going, it's just targeting a firm like a bill of attainder. It's going after one organization and just not necessarily trying to wipe them out, but it is having a very significant detrimental effect. Why do you say it's not necessarily trying to wipe them out? Oh, I think it's just only that, are they so big they can't fail kind of thing? Like they really are such a super giant law firm.

But it's, you know, as you mentioned, it's not just going after the firm, but it's going after those organizations that contract with the firm. And it's like I think of it sometimes like international sanctions. If you're like going after Cuba and you want to sanction it, then you sanction all the other countries that do business with Cuba. Exactly. Yeah. So it's really choking it off. Yeah. So it's really – It's really choking it off. Yeah.

It's trying to throttle it. And whatever one thinks about the direct effects of all of that, which is already large, I think there are these secondary effects which will chill business with the firm in all likelihood. Right. Let's say you're a contractor. Let's say you're a government contractor. You need legal representation. Or you just need lobbying. I'm not totally sure if Perkins does the lobbying side of it, but let's just say legal representation. And Perkins is one of the big firms. They have great Washington experience. At this point, though, if you were a contractor, you would really have to think twice about hiring the firm because the threat would be that you might not get your

contract approved. Yeah. So that's one. I even think there's like a direct effect of it. So that firm has lots of choices. So why would they go with this particular, the contractor has lots of choices. Why would they go with this particular law firm? That's the risk. And then I'd add another risk to it as well. That's direct because that's exactly who's in the bullseye of the executive order. But think about any individual or organization that is doing business with the government or things that they might. time to time and they need their lawyers to represent them with people inside the U.S. government, do you choose a law firm that is obviously being blacklisted by the president of the United States, which filters all the way down through the administration? I think that's another angle that this particular law firm has to think about, but that's why it sends a chilling effect across all other law firms. And that's what's just so stunning and very

significant in terms of our democracy and rule of law system that's supposed to survive on that. Now I'm thinking about it, it kind of fits this whole concept that Trump has applied to, for instance, tariffs, which is the U.S. government is the biggest, baddest, most influential market force on the planet. And we can assert our will on any other, you know, secondary complimentary market. And that can be countries, it could be warfare, it could be literal territory and geography, and it could be law. And you could say, we don't like this firm. And if you want to do business with the US government, you cannot use this firm, right? Or if you're an individual who needs to hire a firm, you should not go to that firm because, you know, you will get our attention. And so it just fits that kind of pattern that Trump has applied to virtually everything in his life, which is when you have power, use it.

Yeah. And it's throwing around the weight that he has just by mere dent of the position he occupies. And, you know, the only counterweight to it in a certain sense is if the law firms bandy together, if the law firms realize if we don't, the status quo is that we get picked off one by one. Rather, we have to unify just as the way in which the universities might need to unify as well by being picked off one by one by different forms of pressure that the administration is putting on them. Right. Well, they might defund all the universities. I care about that. But the law firms, I understand what you're saying, which is at some point, if all of them banded together, it kind of takes the legal system down itself because you won't have representation from anybody. And I will note, right before we jumped on to record this, there was a story that broke in the New York Times

that another powers firm, Williams Connolly, has agreed to represent Perkins in this case. Now, not confirmed, but the Times, I trust, and they say they have four sources here. I will say they noted in the piece that other firms balked at the idea of picking up the Perkins case because they were fearful, frankly, of working for Perkins because then you suddenly become a contractor, essentially. So is collective action really a problem here? Or are you, you know, does the Williams, the decision of Williams and Connolly to join the case make you feel a bit better about this?

That's a great question. I do think the decision of them to join the case because they're such an important law firm also in the country is an important sign that there might be a rallying around. Because I'm sure that the law firms would want to rally around. I'm sure that the law firms think that what the administration is doing is wholly illegitimate. So it's only a question of, do they have that kind of the political will to do it? Or are there other ways they could do it that could be smart? For example, one of the other ways this can chill law firms is that they don't want to represent on a pro bono basis, public interest nonprofit

organizations that are litigating against the administration. But what if they came out in larger numbers? So it's not like you can pick off one or two by saying, oh, look, they're against. Oh, so you're saying put four or five firms on an individual case. Things like that. And more firms coming out on the cases, even if they take individual cases themselves, I think could be another very important sign as litigation is still ramping up. And what is the case that Perkins has here that on the legal basis is that they're just being unfairly discriminated against, that this is the unlawful use of contract law? I mean, what is the actual legality or actual letter of law here? Yeah, I mean, I think that they're being discriminated against by a stern

political opinion. And there's also internal laws and regulations that aren't supposed to allow for that. It's difficult in some instances as to whether or not those apply to the president of the United States. But in so far as he filters it down to the agencies, they might not be able to operate on that without significant litigation and litigation risks. But I don't think that that's the other part of the whole Trump administration's approach and the Musk approach. I don't think they're worried about that. I think they think like, you know like a fine is a price. Like, yes, you're going to fine us for that. Or yes, we're going to have to owe in litigation, but that's the price we're paying.

Well, so for instance, just playing this out, they didn't have to announce the executive order. They could have just not awarded contracts to anyone who was using Perkins and not told anybody about it and just been like, no discrimination here. We're just judging contracts based on their merits. They didn't have to do this, but maybe they wanted to do this to make the point. I completely agree. I've actually thought about that in some ways. Are there some aspects of this that are not as unusual? Because Perkins has been associated more with the Democratic clients and the like, might this have been in any case, they're not exactly going to be, you know, reaching for Perkins when they need to do certain kinds of government contracting and the like. But this is not some kind of implicit.

No, it's very explicit. It's like shoving it in their face and basically telling every other law firm, be careful. Absolutely. And in fact, the stagecraft when Trump signs this executive order like the other ones and he has some aide come and say, Mr. President, this is about the big firms. He holds it up, you know, shows everybody. And there's also the, you know, I think a large part of this is just the messaging because he also says the law firms that are part of the globalists. And in fact, the executive order has this weird reference at the beginning about that their law firm was working with the donor, George Soros. It's like, says the conspiracy theories and the manufacturing of this.

The Jews, man, we're just up there hanging out, doing our globalist thing. I was talking to a couple of lawyers over the weekend about this one, because again, I mean, I don't want to be like, come off as the most ridiculous insider of all time. But I hung out with a few and I was just like, this was shocking to them. I mean, Trump has done a lot of really bad things. And in fact, he issued another executive order against Covington, I believe. But it wasn't as far reaching as this one. And they were just like blown away by this. And to a person, they're like, there's just no way, no way that a judge would ever let this stand because they, having been birthed of the legal system and lived in it, know exactly the chill that this would have. Yeah, I think that that's right too. So there's like hope in the sense that I do have optimism in some ways in which the legal system, the courts will protect the rule of law. And in particular, you know, Perkins could be real smart about how they start to litigate against the executive order.

There's a part of the executive order that's also just so astonishing. It essentially looks like it's trying to bar employees, attorneys from Perkins from going into federal buildings. Really? Yeah, yeah. So the exact. Yeah. Jesus. Okay.

Yeah. That the heads of agencies shall issue, quote unquote, guidance limiting official access from federal government buildings to employees of Perkins Coie when such access would threaten the national security of or otherwise be inconsistent with the interests of the United States, which he has just outlined in the executive order ways in which it's in tension with the interests of the United States. So I think, you know, Perkins should say, okay, can we get access to a federal courthouse, you know, and represent ourselves or our clients or. Under that order, it doesn't seem like it. That's why I think they should test that.

Maybe that's one of the first ways in which they could test the order. It seems like a little bit of a precarious idea to go pick a fight with a major law firm because their lawyers are going to do things. I don't know what the issues with respect to discovery are here or anything like that. Would they be able to sort of dig around and try to find out what went into the exact crafting of this executive order? Could they

try and pursue that? That's a great question. I hadn't thought about it. I thought about it in a different way, which is what did go into the crafting of it. Yeah, who communicated with whom? And it's just ridiculous in the sense of like, the reference to george soros i want i want to know what was the government fact finding that went into this before they issued the executive order and that should come out through discovery absolutely it's like one of the reasons in which one doesn't want to sue another individual because you're going to be you're going to expose yourself yes i think that's a really nice point as well well we're in this place this is a this is i mean, I can't stress enough how much people are bothered by this specifically and we'll see how it goes. I think the fact that

Williams has picked it up does suggest to me that the legal world recognizes the severity of threat. Williams is not a small deal. It's a, it is a massive firm and they're going to put their weight behind it. So we'll see. Ryan, thanks for joining, man. Appreciate it as always. We'll be in touch. Okay. Great. Great to see you. Take care.