Trump’s Legal Blackballing Effort Selectively Protects Jones Day
I’m working on a post on the Administration’s efforts to blackball law firms with ties to Trump’s imagined enemies.
As I’ll show, the effort builds on Trump’s Orwellian “Weaponization” effort; the two fact sheets involved in this effort (Perkins Coie; Paul Weiss) repeat Trump’s false claim that 51 spooks claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop “was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.” Each fact sheet then airs some personal grievances of Trump’s.
Then, Section 1 the Executive Orders (Perkins Coie; Paul Weiss) summarize that grievance. Based on that grievance, the order does the following:
Section 1: Purpose (airing of grievance)
Section 2: Security Clearance Review (in effect, suspension of any clearances held by firm attorneys)
Section 3: Contracting (stripping of federal contracts)
Section 4: Racial discrimination (accusing the firms of racial discrimination)
Section 5: Personnel (prohibiting the hiring of lawyers from targeted firms and prohibiting access to government facilities)
Most of scheme (and even more of DOJ Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle’s attempt to defend it in a hearing before Beryl Howell last week) rests on a national security claim, in turn built off the Section 2 Security Clearance order.
But a big part of it attempts to enforce Trump’s federal segregation efforts in private law firms. For each, the grievance section accuses the firm of “discriminat[ing] against its own attorneys and staff.”
In addition to undermining democratic elections, the integrity of our courts, and honest law enforcement, Perkins Coie racially discriminates against its own attorneys and staff, and against applicants. Perkins Coie publicly announced percentage quotas in 2019 for hiring and promotion on the basis of race and other categories prohibited by civil rights laws. It proudly excluded applicants on the basis of race for its fellowships, and it maintained these discriminatory practices until applicants harmed by them finally sued to enforce change.
My Administration is committed to ending discrimination under “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies and ensuring that Federal benefits support the laws and policies of the United States, including those laws and policies promoting our national security and respecting the democratic process. Those who engage in blatant race-based and sex-based discrimination, including quotas, but purposefully hide the nature of such discrimination through deceiving language, have engaged in a serious violation of the public trust. Their disrespect for the bedrock principle of equality represents good cause to conclude that they neither have access to our Nation’s secrets nor be deemed responsible stewards of any Federal funds.
Section 4 of the Perkins Coie order (which the Paul Weiss order incorporates), reads:
Sec. 4. Racial Discrimination. (a) The Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission shall review the practices of representative large, influential, or industry leading law firms for consistency with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including whether large law firms: reserve certain positions, such as summer associate spots, for individuals of preferred races; promote individuals on a discriminatory basis; permit client access on a discriminatory basis; or provide access to events, trainings, or travel on a discriminatory basis
(b) The Attorney General, in coordination with the Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and in consultation with State Attorneys General as appropriate, shall investigate the practices of large law firms as described in subsection (a) of this section who do business with Federal entities for compliance with race-based and sex-based non-discrimination laws and take any additional actions the Attorney General deems appropriate in light of the evidence uncovered.
In other words, Donald J. Trump has blackballed two law firms in significant part because they aim for diversity in their hiring practices.
Which led me to check the website for Jones Day, still the counterpart to what Perkins Coie used to be for Democrats, the law firm serving the Republican party.
And lo and behold, the Jones Day website looks like Federal government sites did until inauguration day.
Jones Day has a page celebrating its diversity firsts.
They have a page listing affinity groups the likes of which Trump has eliminated from Federal government.
And there are several other pages, including a 1L conference focused on diversity.
The documentation targeting Perkins Coie and Paul Weiss also target the firms for their pro bono work — the former for representing some trans service members challenging the DOD ban, and the latter because Jeannie Rhee represented DC in a lawsuit against January 6 culprits that DC recently dismissed with prejudice (in fact, there were three other Paul Weiss attorneys on the case, as well as a bunch from Dechart, but Rhee was the only one identified, even indirectly, in the backup to the blackballing attempt).
Laudably, Jones Day also does a great deal of pro bono work. It has a page boasting of its pro bono work including — among other things — “representing migrant minors and mothers with their children, many of whom were detained by the U.S. government after fleeing life-threatening, gender-based gang violence in their home countries.”
Jones Day and Our Pro Bono Culture
Immigration – The Border Project
Constitutional Policing and Civil Justice Reform, Standing Together
Advancing the Rule of Law in Africa
American Hospital Association (AHA) & Jones Day Human Trafficking Interview
Obviously, all of this is laudable! These firms are so powerful, it’s important that they remain accessible and give back.
But even the law firm to which Trump has remained loyal — a law firm at which Mizelle himself once worked as of counsel, a lawfirm whence Trump’s Acting Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division as well as several top Civil Division lawyers came — engages in the same kind of laudable practices for which Trump is blackballing Perkins Coie and Paul Weiss. (Curiously, none of the Jones Day Civil Division personnel were at the Perkins Coie hearing last week.)
Update: EEOC sent out letters demanding info on DEI practices from 20 firms not named Jones Day.
The law firms that received letters from Acting Chair Lucas include:
- A & O Shearman
- Debevoise & Plimpton LLP
- Cooley LLP
- Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP
- Goodwin Procter LLP
- Hogan Lovells LLP
- Kirkland & Ellis LLP
- Latham & Watkins LLP
- McDermott Will & Emery
- Milbank LLP
- Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
- Morrison & Foerster LLP
- Perkins Coie
- Reed Smith
- Ropes & Gray LLP
- Sidley Austin LLP
- Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP
- Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
- White & Case LLP
- WilmerHale
The Felon Guy is coming across as a three-year-old brain in a 78-year-old body, and he’s regressing to infancy a lot faster than his minions seem to realize. (Don’t MAGAs have small children who do this stuff?)
Back when Trmp was first elected, I read a letter from the global indigenous Grandmothers in which they called men like Putin and Trmp “moys”:
“You have elected, not a man, but a ‘moy; to lead you . He is a boy in an old man’s body. Moys are a combination of man and boy, but mostly boy. They are large and have loud voices so people mistake them for men, but they are not men. A man thinks of the common good while a moy has not learned to think of anyone but himself. He has not fully developed and is still a child.”
I find this term, moy, to be useful, unfortunately, these days.
There was a book in the early 70’s
“Midolescence: the dangerous years”
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Midolescence.html?id=5lZqAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y
I have always thought of Trump as a “MAD-OLESCENT”
And to Gacyclist point: I have long wondered whether Trump’s preference for Sharpies for note making is a strategy to cope with dyslexia.
His handwriting bears considerable similarities to ComicSans and OpenDyslexic fonts.
I think trump is essentially clueless he just signs in crayon whatever eo miller puts in front of him.
At least he doesn’t sign the EOs with an auto-pen… /s
It is probably most useful with this crew to look at who isn’t on the hit list: connected high rollers. That comes in handy when considering who will be paying the price. However, Convict-1 Krasnov ought to consider that carving out exceptions in a legally defensible way can be extremely difficult and his commissars have demonstrated just how inept they are in doing so.
So, as court cases wind through the system and the losses for the kingdom pile up (I’m looking forward to the FOIA results) the next question is whether the courtier press will let anyone know the truth. That is the part that worries me.
“Carving out exceptions in a legally defensible way can be extremely difficult.” Exactly, and as you point out, this the price he pays for hiring sycophants rather than the competent. As well, hiring the sycophants instructs the competent to stay away, meaning worse writing and thinking going forward.
Rugger_9, I’m right with you re: “the courtier press.” Except that I’ve pretty much given up; only NBC (among the networks) seems brazen enough to put anything remotely close to “the truth” out there on the regular, and the flagship newspapers seem to have confused legitimacy with appeasement.
This is the time when getting your news from the jesters, not the courtiers, makes sense.
At least we know what the “Again” refers to in MAGA: the McCarthy Era.
More like “alternative fact sheet.”
There has to be a way to weaponize the unDEI movement back against Republicans. Like a decade back there was a scandal when the Boston Police didn’t hire line the top 35 scorers in their entrance tests and hired some white males with lower scores. This happens in Police and fire Departments all over. Lawsuits prohibiting the practice of grading white males on a curve could stop this blatant weaponization of unDEI.
immediately flashing back to when the Los Angeles Fire Dept. application process ended up only taking the first people who submitted their apps during a tiny window. Turns out all those who submitted during this tiny window were sons/nephews of serving fire fighters. The whole process was thrown out, and new application process put into place.
A short version of a long story about how institutions fail us.
Speaking of the letter from the 51 spies, another lackluster effort to push back in the laptop story has just fallen on its face.
Hunter’s lawsuit vs Garrett Ziegler has been ordered dismissed WITH prejudice. As a result of Hunter requesting to dismiss WITHOUT prejudice as a seeming ploy to delay or back out of sitting through his own deposition.
Selective protection of Trump’s friends? Unpossible!
/s
What Trump says isn’t from an inner life. He speaks Dear Leader Newspeak. The more we attribute this type of thing to Trump’s addled brain, the more he is a Chairman Mao, and these are the arbitrary purges of a Great Leader. One does not want to say “The Administration decided . . .” instead of “Trump decided . . .”, however, because then there is a policy program. Is this the will of the people?
Purges in elite law will be a program, I believe, so this isn’t “revenge” but to spread fear. This represents an information warfare strategy against the American people and our right to representation. There is a Russian/American combined “think-tank” of neo-fascist philosophy geniuses. How do they coordinate with the White House, I have no idea, but I think I understand their philosophy. They are pushing us towards totalitarian state formation through mimetic crisis and scapegoating mechanisms. As surely as Lenin and Stalin engineered the Soviet Union, they are attempting to make this happen. Even though fascist transformation has never been tried where what it is replacing is obviously better, they think we will be afraid. John Ganz recently suggested saying “The regime” instead of “The Administration” and I’d suggest saying this for Trump to, as in, “The regime decided this . . .”
What this amounts to is preventing some law firms from representing clients who may want to engage them. If these firms are not able to be hired by some one who needs their services the person is at a distinct disadvantage. Don’t know the law firms impacted but I suspect they may be firms which are better than average and have a good track record dealing with the government.
Trump and his gang have some one arrested then the person goes to hire a lawyer but can’t because the lawyer is on the “shit list” and other firms may not have the talent and/or don’t want to upset donnie/elon so the person could wind up without a lawyer and of course donnie and elong would just take the position they aren’t responsible for them not being able to engage a lawyer.
trump is simply attempting to scare lawyers so they won’t represent people he dislikes, wants rid of, etc. People will see what is happening and just back away. Now some may be willing to risk things, but if they wind up on a “shit list” ……………..
Its like the court ruling in favour of people who were being deported to El Salvador. We don’t really know who the people are and most likely their families don’t know what happened to them and now we see videos of them on their knees having their heads shaved and the Pres. of El Salvador saying he can keep them as long as required. It scares people and that is what trump wants.
Between laying off/firing government employees, destroying government departments, causing people to die this is simply another phase of disbanding the U.S.A. and making people too afraid to fight back or so he hopes. With all the firings people will become impoverished and need to spend a lot more time on that than fighting for their rights. On the other hand Trump may be hastening his own demise. At some point some is going to die and their family or someone will blame Trump, Musk, J.D. etc and decide to take action or he will give an order and some one won’t follow it or elon’s boys show up with some alleged federal police type and find out they are being fired upon by the people in the office.
What is currently happening in the U.S.A. is not that different from what started to happen in Germany and countries the Nazis invaded. We have seen these types of activities in Hungry and other countries. it how Putin, Orban, Kimmy3,etc. all operate.
Trump acts like a racist, misogynist, idiot, dictator. Some one ought to tell him, his daddy is dead and he is never going to be good enough. Retire.
This is not going to end well.
I’d bet the DEI stuff is a fake rationale. There is something else behind this, including the selection of which firms to target.
Who the selected law firms have represented could be one possible rationale. That is an easy one to guess, given the White House orders against Covington & Burling and Perkins Coie. I’ve not seen any analysis of that for the List of 20, although maybe that is coming …
I wonder if political contributions might be another? If I am not mistaken, Big Law employees are among the major donors to Democrats. And why would they not? The demographics of big law firm employees (highly educated, urban) make them likely Democratic Party donors – and they have money.
Political contributors are required name their employers, so the contributions database would easy enough for even the Doge Bros to analyze & determine that some firms’ employees have donated more to Dems than others.
That would be part of the autocrats’ playbook, to choke of funding for your political opponents.
Anyone have a good primer on how selective enforcement works in natsec context, especially Security Clearances? As a lawyer, I know the answer ultimately will be: It depends on what gets 5 votes by SCOTUS. But what does precedent point towards, in the meantime?
I don’t think the attempt to hang this on security clearances will work. Chad Mizelle was scrambling a bit when he had to pretend it would last week.
Aside from the “we will make sure it does not end,” do Republicans even imagine the consequences of a change in President affecting their network? The conservative movement has a tighter network between obvious Koch, Mercer, Federalist, and now South African-/Russian-inflected money trails. All the members only pretend to be the scrappy Rebel Alliance of outsiders.
Employment lawyer here with some info about the EEOC letters demanding information.
First, the EEOC does not have the authority to proactively select employers for an employment practices audit.
Second, the Acting Chair Andrea Lucas signed the letters. She could initiate a charge on her own, called a Commissioner’s charge. However, to do so, she would have to swear under penalty of perjury that she has a reason to believe these firms have violated the law.
Third, if real investigation based on a charge was opened, then the law prohibits the EEOC from disclosing any information it obtains, unless it proceeds all the way to filing litigation, a process that usually takes years. Violating that rule comes with criminal penalties of up to a year in prison.
All the firms should just respond that they don’t wish to participate in this voluntary exchange of information.
One common thread to the firms listed (setting aside Perkins Coie, Cooley, and Reed Smith) is that they participated in a Law Fellowship Program run by Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO). It’s footnoted extensively in the letters. It’s possible some lower level person at the EEOC found that source and used it as the basis for who to send the letters to. Here’s the list of firms that participated. https://www.seo-usa.org/law/partners/
Jones Day is on the SEO list and didn’t get the letter. There are some other notable firms on the SEO list that have Trump administration ties and also avoided this fracas – Sullivan & Cromwell, for example, and Gibson Dunn, which is where Andrea Lucas worked before being appointed to the EEOC.
What do you think explains the inclusion of Skadden, Arps and Kirkland & Ellis on that list, among other very prominent, established firms?
I greatly appreciate you (and Amateur Lawyer, above) sharing your professional insights! This one has the aura of internecine lawyers’ warfare being pursued under the rubric of a Trump revenge strike, but that is probably because I exist wholly outside this world.
Another example of IOKIYAR.
Section 1: Purpose (airing of grievance).
This line of the post brought back memories of Frank Costanza and his epic Festivus rant. Sorry about the off topic.
There aren’t that many firms in Biglaw. The ones missing from the list are perhaps more interesting than those on the list. We know about Jones Day. Sullivan & Cromwell is repping Trump in his appeal from the New York criminal case. Neither Cleary Gottlieb, Cravath, or Davis Polk are on the list either. I wonder why not? Cleary has a liberal-ish reputation–maybe more so than anybody on the list except Debevoise.
Big Law is comprised of more than just a handful of white shoe firms in NY or DC.
The link at the word “whence” goes to this 1/21/25 Bloomberg Law “exclusive”:
Trump DOJ’s Civil Division Recruits More Jones Day Lawyers
Roth clerked for SCALIA and Garver clerked for KAVANAUGH.
I know Marcy realizes this because she Reposted Hunter Walker’s THREAD,
but I just want to put it here in writing:
https://bsky.app/profile/hunterw.bsky.social/post/3lkltuzupgk2z
March 17, 2025 at 3:04 PM
When this gets out of the pokey, I’ll have more to add.
CORRECTION: That Bloomberg article is from 2/21/25 [not 1/21]
A couple more things from Walker’s THREAD [emphasis added]:
It’s over folks. One of the firms has caved to Trump.
“Paul, Weiss pledged to abandon diversity policies and to provide free legal representation equivalent to $40 million for clients with a “full spectrum of political viewpoints” to include the president’s antisemitism taskforce, “fairness in the justice system” and “other mutually agreed projects,”
The proclamation that invoked the Alien Enemies Act is going to be used in a way that hasn’t been considered when arresting members of the Venezuelan gang (and anyone else caught up in the pogrom).
“But a reading of the language by senior Justice Department lawyers, together with the historical context of the law, has led the Trump administration to believe “that the government does not need a warrant to enter a home or premises to search for people believed to be members of that gang,”
YOUR INSTITUTIONS WILL NOT SAVE YOU
As a lawyer of 36 years standing, I am spitting mad at Paul Weiss’ capitulation. This firm is wealthy and powerful and has no excuse for knuckling under to the would-be autocrat. I hope it sees a mass resignation of attorneys to form a new firm. We are in uncharted waters.
It’s not just the capitulation, it’s a major law firm acting corruptly. There was a bribe here, don’t miss that.
Ugh. Every attorney who remains at that firm is now compromised, because they implicitly approve the bribe offered to Trump.
I posted this at the Hollander post, but will repost here:
[I’m trying to get a TL together of all the stuff that went on today…wish me luck.
ie: as I related at the other post, Judge Hollander wrote a SECOND letter
[reported at 11:09 PM] calling out DUDEK’s LIES]
3/21/25 at 10:53 PM Chris Geidner reports TRUMP lashes out at legal system:
https://bsky.app/profile/chrisgeidner.bsky.social/post/3lkwpxr3kcs22
March 21, 2025 at 10:53 PM [emphasis added]
OY! NOT today…YESterday. That’s a great start. LOL!