Left: President Donald Trump speaks after signing an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Feb. 3, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci). Right: Former special counsel Robert Mueller appears before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on his report on Russian election interference, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, July 24, 2019 (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik).
More than 100 former associates at the powerful law firm Paul, Weiss signed onto a letter denouncing its leadership for caving to the Trump administration by cutting a deal in which Donald Trump withdrew an executive order targeting the organization in exchange for $40 million in pro bono legal work “to support the Administration’s initiatives” as well as ending any “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) policies, according to the president.
The firm’s decision came in response to Trump’s executive order targeting the firm as he has amplified his attacks on legal professionals and organizations he believes worked on behalf of his perceived political rivals.
“During the first Trump administration, Paul, Weiss lawyers, including many of us, fought to protect civil and human rights with the firm’s support. That is why it came as a shock to find the firm at the very forefront of capitulation to the Trump administration’s bullying tactics,” states the letter, which was addressed to Chairman Brad Karp and publicly released by grassroots advocacy group Common Cause.
“We expected the firm to be a leader in standing up for the legal profession, the adversary system, and the right to counsel,” the letter says. “Instead of a ringing defense of the values of democracy, we witnessed a craven surrender to, and thus complicity in, what is perhaps the gravest threat to the independence of the legal profession since at least the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy.”
The letter was signed by 141 of the firm’s alumni and includes some attorneys who were with the firm as far back as the 1960s. Nearly one-third of the signatories joined onto the letter anonymously out of fear that including their names would lead to professional repercussions.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Trump on March 14 issued an executive order titled “Addressing Risks from Paul Weiss,” labeling the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP as a national security threat. The firm has links to former special counsel Robert Mueller, Trump’s criminal prosecution in Manhattan, and lawsuits sparked by the Jan. 6, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Much of the language echoes that of a previously issued executive order aimed at Hillary Clinton-linked law firm Perkins Coie, as well as a February order focused on the firm Covington & Burling, linked to former special prosecutor Jack Smith.
As with prior memos, Trump ordered various agency heads to “immediately take steps consistent with applicable law to suspend any active security clearances” held by individuals at the firm. He also ordered the Office of Management and Budget to “identify all Government goods, property, material, and services, including Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, provided for the benefit of Paul Weiss” — and that such provisions be ceased “expeditiously.”
Less than a week later, on March 20, Trump announced that he had “agreed to withdraw” the Paul, Weiss order after the firm agreed to make the aforementioned concessions, a move many saw as capitulating to the president’s retributive and possibly unlawful whims.
Karp over the weekend told firm employees that Trump’s EO was an “unprecedented threat” to their professional survival and that had he not made a deal it was “very likely that our firm would not be able to survive a protracted dispute with the Administration.”
However, that was apparently not enough to appease at least a portion of the firm’s estimated 4,100 alums.
“This is not a matter of partisan politics. At a time when judges are threatened with violence and impeachment for applying the rule of law, the very independence of lawyers and the legal profession is at stake. We are therefore profoundly saddened, and deeply outraged, that the firm in which we heretofore took pride has cowardly allowed itself to become instead a poster child for the administration’s efforts to silence dissent and impose a loyalty test on attorneys,” the letter states. “In your post-surrender message to the firm, you expressed the view that the firm could now ‘put the matter behind us.’ That statement is not just bad lawyering compounding bad negotiating, it is false. It is already clear that the President is claiming that the firm gave away more than it admits. Even worse, from the standpoint of posterity, it is a permanent stain on the face of a great firm that sought to gain a profit by forfeiting its soul.”
Trump’s Paul, Weiss executive order — targeting a law firm linked to the president’s perceived enemies — was the third of its kind. Earlier in March, he issued an executive order aimed at Hillary Clinton-linked law firm Perkins Coie, and in February he targeted the firm Covington & Burling, linked to former special prosecutor Jack Smith.
The announcement appeared to have an immediate effect on at least one other high-profile law firm: a Chicago-based associate of Skadden Arps announced her resignation on Thursday, citing “Paul Weiss’ decision to cave to the Trump administration on DEI, representation and staffing” as having “forced [her] hand].”
A representative from Paul, Weiss did not immediately respond to Law&Crime’s request for comment.
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