Jenner & Block on Tuesday became the latest target in President Donald Trump’s war on Big Law after he issued an executive order revoking its attorneys’ security clearances and ordering a review of the firm’s government contracts. But Jenner signaled it doesn’t plan to back down without a fight.
The firm, headquartered in Chicago, employs over 400 attorneys across six offices nationwide and is the fourth major law firm targeted by the Trump administration with similar executive actions. Each of the firms — Paul Weiss, Perkins Coie, and Covington & Burling — has had ties to Trump’s political opponents.
In the Tuesday order, Trump specifically singled out attorney Andrew Weissmann, a Jenner employee who served as a lead prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office, which investigated Trump’s ties to Russia in 2016. The order described Weissmann’s career as “rooted in weaponized government and abuse of power.”
“Jenner & Block has had a long history representing clients, paid and pro bono, in their most difficult matters since 1914,” Jenner & Block said in a statement released after the order was issued. “Today, we have been named in an Executive Order similar to one which has already been declared unconstitutional by a federal court. We remain focused on serving and safeguarding our clients’ interests with the dedication, integrity, and expertise that has defined our firm for more than one hundred years and will pursue all appropriate remedies.”
US District Judge Beryl Howell on March 12 partially blocked Trump’s order against Perkins Coie. Politico reported that during an emergency hearing, the judge said that the “retaliatory animus” of Trump’s order against the firm was “clear on its face” and “runs head-on into the wall of First Amendment protections.”
On Friday, the Justice Department filed a motion to disqualify Howell from overseeing the lawsuit, arguing the judge is “insufficiently impartial” to rule on the case.
While Perkins Coie fights the executive order in court, another targeted firm has taken a contrasting approach to handling Trump’s actions against it.
Instead of challenging the order’s legality, Paul Weiss agreed to reevaluate its hiring practices in alignment with Trump’s anti-DEI initiatives and provide $40 million in pro bono legal work to further causes identified by the Trump administration, such as combating antisemitism and assisting veterans. Trump rescinded the order against Paul Weiss after the agreement was struck, though Business Insider previously reported the language in Paul Weiss’ copy of the agreement did not include references to DEI that were in Trump’s announcement.
Rachel Cohen, a now-former associate from the high-profile firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, last Friday publicly resigned over what she said was her firm’s resistance to challenging the president’s orders.
Also on Friday, the president sent a memo to Attorney General Pam Bondi ordering her to identify “frivolous” lawsuits against his administration and flag the law firms associated with the cases so they can be targeted for punitive actions like those levied against Paul Weiss and Perkins Coie.
In an email to his staff on Sunday, Paul Weiss Chairman Brad Karp called Trump’s order “unprecedented” in the firm’s 150-year history and an “existential threat.”
“The executive order could easily have destroyed our firm,” Karp wrote. “It brought the full weight of the government down on our firm, our people, and our clients.”
The assault on Big Law — and each firm’s disparate handling of the orders against them — has made waves across the legal industry, with legal scholars warning Business Insider the unprecedented attacks from the sitting president are a threat to the rule of law that have implications far beyond damaging the businesses of the targeted firms.
“Something like this has never happened, or maybe hasn’t happened since the time of Andrew Jackson. I mean, this is really a kind of a constitutional crisis,” Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, previously told BI. “I think our legal system is under attack, and it’s a question of who’s going to step up and defend it.”
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