After Donald Trump launched an unprecedented offensive against prominent law firms last year, most of the president’s targets capitulated, fearing White House punishments. Four firms, however, fought back, challenged Trump’s orders in court, and went undefeated.
The victories for the quartet — Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie and Susman Godfrey — looked even better last week when the Trump Justice Department announced plans to throw in the towel: Instead of appealing their earlier defeats, DOJ lawyers said they would abandon their defense of the president’s executive orders.
One day later, federal prosecutors changed their mind, completed a 180-degree turn and notified the four firms that they would proceed with the appeal after all.
It seemed rather obvious from a distance that someone in a high position of influence had intervened in the matter, and according to the latest reporting from The Wall Street Journal, that person is exactly who most observers assumed it was.
The Justice Department’s surprise reversal last week on defending the White House’s sanctions against law firms came after an angry outburst by President Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.
After The Wall Street Journal reported on March 2 that the department was dropping its defense of executive orders that outlined punishments against specific law firms, Trump told advisers to stop it immediately, the people said.
The Journal’s report hasn’t been independently verified by MS NOW, but the White House made no effort to deny its accuracy. On the contrary, press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the Justice Department changed course “at the president’s direction.”
The same report added that Trump specifically told White House officials that he hadn’t signed off on the DOJ’s decision and directed his team “to change course,” which they promptly did.
The move opened the door to the administration extending a losing legal fight simply to make the president feel better — a variety of judges from across the ideological spectrum have already ruled against the White House in this case, concluding that the move was plainly illegal — though Trump evidently doesn’t much care.
As last week came to an end, the hyperpoliticized Justice Department completed a dramatically different court filing in the case that, among other things, lashed out at the federal judiciary and accused judges of “encroaching” on the president’s powers. The New York Times described the language in the filing as “blistering,” adding, “The tone and language of the brief were remarkable as Justice Department lawyers opened an argument to federal appeals court judges by attacking those judges’ lower court colleagues.”
This was, in other words, a court filing that echoed the kind of rhetoric Trump likes to use — and likes to hear those around him echo.
To be sure, none of these developments was or is especially surprising. It’s been obvious for the past 14 months or so that the Justice Department has become an extension of the West Wing, and the reversal in the case against the defiant law firms reinforces the unmistakable pattern.
But the revelations add fresh weight to the broader indictment about Trump’s control over federal law enforcement.
A few weeks ago, Main Justice unfurled a giant banner featuring the president’s face on its facade. The move removed a pretense that no one took seriously anyway. As The Wall Street Journal summarized in November, this is a Justice Department in which the president, not the attorney general, “calls the shots.”
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
