Washington — The Justice Department on Monday moved to drop its legal defense of President Trump’s executive orders that targeted several high-profile law firms, according to court filings.
In papers filed with the U.S. appeals court in Washington, D.C., the Trump administration said it would be voluntarily dismissing appeals of lower court decisions that found the executive orders punishing the four firms were unconstitutional. The firms are Perkins Coie; Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP; Susman Godfrey and Jenner & Block.
“The government’s decision to dismiss its appeal is clearly the right one, a spokesperson for WilmerHale said in a statement. “As we said from the outset, our challenge to the unlawful Executive Order was about defending our clients’ constitutional right to retain the counsel of their choosing and defending the rule of law. We are pleased these foundational principles were vindicated.”
CBS News has reached out to the Justice Department and the three other firms for comment.
While the Trump administration will no longer defend the executive orders against the four firms, it successfully extracted hundreds of millions of dollars in free legal services from nine others that cut deals with the White House in an effort to head-off directives targeting them.
The cases arose out of a series of executive orders that Mr. Trump signed in March and April of last year that sought to punish several law firms because of certain hires and legal work.
The president rescinded one of the measures, against Paul, Weiss, after the firm pledged to provide tens of millions of dollars in pro bono work to support White House initiatives. Mr. Trump’s directive had singled out the work of Mark Pomerantz, who previously worked at the firm and who oversaw an investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office into Mr. Trump’s finances before he became president.
Each of the orders targeted the law firms’ clients, access to federal buildings and officials, and security clearances held by their employees.
In the case of Perkins Coie, Mr. Trump attacked the firm because of its representation of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign and hiring of a research firm that retained former British spy Christopher Steele, who produced the infamous “Steele Dossier.”
WilmerHale and Jenner & Block, meanwhile, had employed lawyers who worked on the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Among those was Robert Mueller, the special counsel who led the probe, at WilmerHale, and Andrew Weissmann, who was hired by Jenner & Block. Both left their respective firms several years ago.
The fourth firm that Mr. Trump sought to sanction, Susman Godfrey, represented Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation lawsuit against Fox News, which stemmed from unfounded claims about the 2020 election that were aired by the network. Fox and Dominion reached a $787 million settlement agreement in 2023.
Some of the law firms had also been involved in litigation challenging aspects of Mr. Trump’s second-term agenda, including his attempt to withhold federal funds from medical institutions that provide medical treatments to young people experiencing gender dysphoria and his firings of inspector generals across the federal government.
The four firms each sued the Trump administration, and four different federal judges ruled overwhelmingly in their favor, finding the measures violated the First, Fifth and Sixth Amendments. None of the executive orders took effect as a result of the litigation.
In a decision siding with Perkins Coie, a federal judge found that the executive order targeting the firm sent the message that “lawyers must stick to the party line, or else.” In ruling for Susman Godfrey, another judge found that the government “sought to use its immense power to dictate the positions that law firms may or may not take,” which threatened the foundation of legal representation in the U.S.
The judge, Loren AliKhan, said that the executive order was the result of a “personal vendetta” against Susman Godfrey.
At another firm, Covington & Burling, one of its lawyers, who worked on former special counsel Jack Smith’s two prosecutions of Mr. Trump, had his security clearance targeted. Smith’s cases against the president were dropped after he was elected to a second term.
The president’s executive orders led to a divide among the legal community, as a number of well-known firms reached agreements with the White House to protect themselves from being punished.
The executive orders that targeted the firms were just one part of a broader campaign by Mr. Trump to go after his perceived political enemies in his second term. The president has also revoked security clearances and protective details for officials who have criticized him, and the Justice Department obtained federal indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Those criminal cases, however, were dropped after a federal judge found the prosecutor who secured the indictments was improperly appointed.
The Justice Department’s decision to end its appeals in the cases involving the law firms also comes as it responds to more than 600 lawsuits that challenge many aspects of Mr. Trump’s agenda. Government lawyers have walked away from several of the cases, including one brought by the American Bar Association after the Justice Department cut off grants for training and support programs that aim to help domestic violence and sexual assault survivors.
A federal judge ruled in favor of the organization, and the Trump administration declined to appeal.
The American Bar Association filed a similar legal challenge to the law firm executive orders in June, arguing that the White House “used the vast powers of the Executive Branch to coerce lawyers and law firms to abandon clients, causes, and policy positions the President does not like,” in violation of the First Amendment.
The Justice Department was set to argue in favor of dismissing the group’s suit in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.