Dem
47
GOP
53
We would suggest that the above item gives some hope that, in the end, the guardrails will hold, and the system will ultimately work as it should. This item, by contrast, not so much.
As we noted earlier this week, the Trump administration put yet another white-shoe law firm in its crosshairs, namely Paul, Weiss. The problem, in this case, was that FORMER partner Mark Pomerantz was one of the lawyers involved in investigating and prosecuting Trump's porn-star payments, the ones that made him into a convicted felon.
In a corrupt-as-it-gets example of score-settling, Trump issued an executive order stripping the lawyers at Paul, Weiss of their security clearances, significantly limiting the firm's ability to work on federal cases. He also prohibited the firm's lawyers from interacting with federal employees or entering federal buildings (like, say, federal courthouses). The latter two provisions are probably unconstitutional but, of course, it takes a long time to resolve such issues. And time is money, particularly when there are 1,000 lawyers and their support staff on the payroll. Just this week, at least seven clients left the firm in response to Trump's order.
Under these circumstances, Paul, Weiss decided that a surrender was called for. In order to get Trump to cancel his executive order, the firm formally apologized for the "wrongdoing" of Pomerantz. It also agreed to end any DEI efforts currently underway. And finally, Paul, Weiss will do pro bono work for the government—$40 million worth.
It is not clear what the nature of this pro bono work will be. According to the press release, it will be related to "combating antisemitism" and "assisting veterans." But when this administration says it is "combating antisemitism," that's basically a load of garbage (see below for more), so it's hard to know what we're really talking about here. We also wonder if there will be some sort of malicious compliance, like the firm doing 40 hours of work, at an announced rate of $1 million/hour. Alternatively, lawyers are already strongly encouraged/required (depending on the state) to do some amount of pro bono work every year (usually 25-50 hours). If you take 50 hours, multiply it by 1,000 lawyers, and then multiply that by, say, $1,000-hour (which is pretty cheap for white-shoe-level representation), then you end up with $50 million. So, maybe Paul, Weiss will do the same amount of pro bono work it usually does, and will just say it's "for the government."
Whatever is going on, and however much of a concession that $40 million in legal work really is, this whole situation stinks to high heaven. If a 1,000-person law firm is somehow responsible for every case its staff works on while a part of the firm, and before joining the firm, and after leaving the firm, then that's entirely untenable (especially since part of being a lawyer is sometimes handling cases you don't agree with). And if a president can wave his pen around, and force a firm to eat both dirt and as much as eight figures in free legal work, that's also untenable.
Unfortunately, we don't see any way to address this new power that Trump has discovered for himself (and note, he's already gone after a couple of other firms, while there are another 20 or so who are potentially in the on-deck circle). If Paul, Weiss wanted to go to court and sue, they could probably win, but filing such a suit would run entirely contrary to the purpose for which they settled. Congress might be able to come up with a law that prohibits this kind of blackmail, but it's hard to know what that would look like, and besides, there's no way THIS Congress tries to do anything about this kind of corrupt behavior. Impeachment and removal would also be appropriate, but of course, that's not happening, either. All in all, it's pretty grim. (Z)