A federal judge on Friday permanently barred the Trump administration from enforcing an executive order stripping the prominent law firm Perkins Coie of security clearance and access to government buildings and contractors.
Washington, D.C. Judge Beryl Howell called Trump’s retaliatory order an “unprecedented attack” on the principles of the legal system, and unconstitutional for violating several amendments.
He compared Trump’s attack to the exhortation: “Let’s kill all the lawyers,” uttered in Shakespeare’s Henry VI .
“In a cringe-worthy twist on the theatrical phrase, “Let’s kill all the lawyers,” Howell wrote, Trump “takes the approach of ‘Let’s kill the lawyers I don’t like,’ sending the clear message: lawyers must stick to the party line, or else.”
The decision permanently blocks the administration from enforcing Trump’s March order that targeted the firm, in which the president blasted Perkins Coie for its ties to the left, including working with the 2016 campaign of Hillary Clinton and liberal donor George Soros, and declared the firm a national security risk.
Howell held that the executive order violated the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments of the Constitution, and that it amounted to Trump “settling personal vendettas” by taking steps that served “no legitimate government interest, but only the interest of retaliation.”
The judge also found that the attack on the firm effectively barred its clients from their constitutional rights to adequate legal representation, as the March order blocked Perkins Coie lawyers from entering government buildings.
The over 100-page ruling also referred to similarly targeted firms like Paul, Weiss, which saw the threatened sanctions against it vanish soon after it became one of a number of firms that agreed to provide tens of millions of dollars in free legal services to support administration priorities.
“None of these agreed-upon policy or practice changes appear to explain or address how any national security concerns sufficient to warrant the Paul, Weiss EO [executive order] could have changed so rapidly,” Howell wrote.
The Independent has contacted the White House and Justice Department for comment.
Friday’s ruling could serve as a model for three similar suits for targeted firms that are still being considered.
And it marks another escalation in the administration’s war with the courts, where the White House has been accused of dangerously demonizing or ignoring rulings it disagrees with.
