Left: President Donald Trump listens during a swearing in ceremony for Dr. Mehmet Oz to be Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, April 18, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon). Right: Attorney Mark Zaid speaks about an unfair competition lawsuit against President Donald Trump, on March 9, 2017, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images).
Famed national security lawyer Mark Zaid is suing the Trump administration over the revocation of his security clearance.
In late March, President Donald Trump stripped Zaid and several other high-profile individuals of security clearances in an executive order.
Unlike the bombast contained in similar such actions targeting disfavored law firms, the executive order simply said the president “determined that it is no longer in the national interest” for the 15 named individuals — many of whom are, or might be perceived as, critics or enemies of Trump — to “access classified information.”
The 29-page complaint filed Monday in a Washington, D.C., federal court assails the 45th and 47th president’s order as “improper political retribution” and “dangerous, unconstitutional retaliation.”
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“The immediate effect of the revocation has been that Mr. Zaid can no longer represent current or future clients in matters where doing so requires access to classified information,” the lawsuit reads. “President Trump’s actions, and the actions of the Departments or Agencies that have complied with the President’s directive, have directly injured Mr. Zaid and his clients by undermining his ability to continue to represent them and zealously advocate on their behalf in the national security arena.”
The complaint goes on to say Zaid may lose out on representing “certain present and prospective clients” entirely — lacking the ability to continue representing them, or perhaps never being able to represent them in the first place, due to the lack of access.
“No American should lose their livelihood, or be blocked as a lawyer from representing clients, because a president carries a grudge toward them or who they represent,” Zaid said in a statement provided to Law&Crime. “This isn’t just about me. It’s about using security clearances as political weapons.”
This state of affairs has also created negative knock-on effects for Zaid’s current clients as well, according to the lawsuit. In the filing, Zaid says he is pursuing relief on their behalf.
“This particular action has a cascading adverse effect on Mr. Zaid’s ability to represent other current clients,” the lawsuit reads. “Moreover, restricting Mr. Zaid’s ability to act on information he already knows is a constructive severance of his ongoing attorney-client relationships, as he could not possibly uphold his ethical obligations to zealously represent his clients while also ignoring crucial information relevant to their cases.”
The lawsuit names several relevant agencies within the U.S. government who are believed to have acted on Trump’s executive order.
“[T]hey have launched a bald-faced attack on a sacred constitutional guarantee: the right to petition the court or federal agencies on behalf of clients,” the lawsuit continues. “An attack on this right is especially insidious because it jeopardizes Mr. Zaid’s ability to pursue and represent the rights of others without fear of retribution.”
Over several decades, Zaid has represented a wide variety of clients, including, most famously, whistleblowers. The seasoned national security attorney represented the key whistleblower in the Ukraine scandal that led to Trump’s first impeachment in December 2019.
And, until recently, his access has never been a problem.
“Since being granted a security clearance in or around 2002, Mr. Zaid has never had his eligibility suspended or revoked,” the lawsuit says. “He has successfully passed multiple background investigations during Republican and Democrat administrations and been adjudicated trustworthy.”
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Then came the Ukraine scandal.
“Since 2017, Mr. Zaid has handled cases involving Mr. Trump and his Administration much in the same manner as he had with other Presidential administrations,” the lawsuit goes on. “But it was not until the 2019 [intelligence community] Whistleblower matter that Mr. Zaid apparently came onto President Trump’s radar, immediately sparking his ire and that of his loyalists both inside and outside the government.”
Trump’s disdain for Zaid is a matter of public record.
“In the aftermath of Mr. Zaid’s role as legal counsel becoming public, President Trump called him a ‘sleazeball,”” the lawsuit explains. “The President’s comments occurred at a televised political rally in Louisiana in November 2019, along with his displaying a photo of someone said to be Mr. Zaid … Days after the Louisiana rally, President Trump spoke to reporters at the White House about the impeachment witness: ‘The whistleblower, because of that, should be revealed. And his lawyer, who said the worst things possibly two years ago, he should be sued and maybe for treason. Maybe for treason, but he should be sued. His lawyer is a disgrace.’”
The lawsuit chiefly argues the revocation of Zaid’s security clearance violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
“This case is about methods and process,” the lawsuit argues. “More specifically, there were no methods and there was no process.”
Typically, the revocation of a security clearance is a multistep process — one that requires notification by way of “comprehensive and detailed explanations” of the change and the opportunity for the targeted person to respond beforehand.
Zaid says none of that happened here.
“The Defendants failed to abide by the requirements imposed through binding regulations,” the lawsuit alleges. “By taking direct action against Mr. Zaid for exercising his basic rights and carrying out his proper function as counsel and a zealous advocate for his clients, Defendants’ have engaged in blatant political retribution and textbook ‘arbitrary and capricious’ conduct. Defendants have given no reasoned or legitimate explanation for their conduct, and ignored all procedural interests implicated by their actions.”
Under the APA, courts are empowered to block or reverse government action deemed “arbitrary and capricious.” Under the standard, actions that eschew formal processes — whether internal rules or broader statutory laws — are often found to qualify for such treatment.
Zaid also says Trump’s revocation of his security clearance violated First Amendment guarantees of speech, association, and petition, as well as Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process.
“The Administration admitted it revoked the clearance of a veteran, non-partisan national security lawyer to punish him for his proper representation of a client in the impeachment process,” Abbe David Lowell, founding member of Lowell & Associates and one of the attorneys representing Zaid in the matter, said in a statement. “That’s illegal, unconstitutional, and exactly what this lawsuit will show.”
