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.
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.
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 . . .”