Dem
47
GOP
53
There are many ways that Donald Trump is trying to replace the rule of law with rule by decree. The only reason he hasn't openly said something like "L'État, c'est moi" is that he doesn't speak French and Oliver Cromwell never said something so pithy.
Now Trump is trying to destroy a third law firm. First he went after Covington & Burling because they are defending former special counsel Jack Smith. They simply conceded defeat and will lose a lot of business defending clients in cases requiring security clearances, which they no longer have. Then he did the same thing to Perkins and Coie. Only they didn't give up. They tried to find a law firm that would defend them. Several were scared and turned them down. We know that people who defend themselves in court are fools, but we didn't realize that even applied to the biggest law firms with over 1,000 highly talented lawyers. Eventually Williams & Connelly agreed to take the case, and a judge almost immediately shot Trump down in a scathing preliminary ruling.
Now #3 is up. Trump has signed a new XO stripping the security clearances of the lawyers at Paul, Weiss—another top white shoe law firm. He specifically singled out one of their attorneys, Mark Pomerantz, who had previously led an investigation of him when Pomerantz was with the Manhattan DA's office.
These attacks are likely to continue. They have multiple purposes. First, Trump wants to thumb his nose at the rule of law and show that it is no longer applicable. Second, he wants to punish law firms that defend people he hates, as a crude and blatant form of punishment. Taking away all their security clearances eliminates their ability to work on complex national security cases. Banning them from entering federal property (like courtrooms) makes it impossible for them to defend clients in any federal case. The clear intention here is to destroy the firm. Trump always thinks of money first, so when he wants to punish someone, the first thing he thinks of is how to hurt them financially.
Third, these attacks are a signal to all law firms and all lawyers that if they defend anyone he hates, he will destroy them. So when he has AG Pam Bondi indict everyone he hates, from Liz Cheney down to normal DoJ lawyers who were assigned to work on the Jan. 6 case, they won't be able to find a lawyer. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to counsel in criminal cases, but is silent about what happens if every lawyer in the country is so scared of Trump that he or she refuses to take the case. Then the accused will probably have to go to prison for life unless he or she gets a jury with one sympathetic member who simply refuses to vote guilty, no matter what the DoJ concocts as facts. It's a slim reed.
Paul, Weiss can probably get Williams & Connolly to defend them since they have nothing to lose at this point. If the case lands before U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell again, as did the Perkins & Coie case, she will be beyond livid at Trump, but she is smart enough not to let that show. Her ruling will be scathing nevertheless. Judge Tanya Chutkan probably wouldn't be much better for Trump. There are 19 judges in the D.C. District Court, of whom 9 were appointed by Democratic presidents, plus two Ronald Reagan appointees, four George W. Bush appointees, and four Trump appointees. But these XOs are so egregious and so clearly intended to destroy the rule of law that even the Trump appointees may balk at them. (V)