The Justice Department has told four large law firms targeted by President Donald Trump that its decision to withdraw from court fights with them is being reversed, according to people familiar with the change on Tuesday morning.
That decision came after the announcement about dropping the cases against the firms drew the ire of Trump and his top aide Stephen Miller, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The reversal appears to re-up Trump’s attempts to try to block the firms from federal government access over their ties to Democrats.
Trump had attempted to use the powers of the presidency to prevent the firms’ lawyers from accessing federal buildings, securing classified information and meeting with federal agencies — all mainstays of Washington-based legal work.
The firms had challenged the executive orders and have so far won in court.
The Justice Department was appealing the judges’ rulings striking down executive orders placed on the four firms — Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr; Perkins Coie; Jenner & Block; and Susman Godfrey — last year.
On Monday night, however, the Trump administration retreated in full, telling the DC US Circuit Court of Appeals it agreed to drop the cases.
Yet the firms were told Tuesday morning the department was changing its mind and filings reflecting the change of plans would be sent to the DC Circuit soon after, people familiar with the plan told CNN.
The Justice Department notified the DC Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday it was withdrawing its willingness to end the fight.
Lawyers for the law firms hit back, however, telling the court, “Under no circumstances should the government’s unexplained about-face provide a basis for an extension of its brief.”
Judges from the circuit haven’t yet responded.
The free speech advocacy group the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression condemned the Justice Department digging in on its executive orders on Tuesday, and capturing the broader concern over the targeting of the firms.
“Today’s reversal is an embarrassment,” Will Creeley, FIRE’s legal director, said. “Like we said yesterday: This is the president going after his political opponents, a plain and simple violation of our nation’s commitment to justice and individual rights. That’s still true 24 hours later.”
On Monday night, all four law firms issued lengthy statements celebrating their wins.
They also reiterated their opposition to the administration as part of a broader effort to protect the rule of law, and noted four federal judges in DC had called the restrictions that the Trump administration tried to place on the firms’ Washington lawyers unconstitutional.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment Tuesday.
The administration’s fight to change the business approach of major law firms has included some of the most shocking attempts at retribution by Trump for his own past legal issues.
The firms that had faced executive orders were singled out by the White House as being in opposition to Trump himself or national security threats.
Each of the firms, Trump said, had employed lawyers who had investigated or opposed him, especially in the special counsel investigation of Robert Mueller after the 2016 election and after the 2020 election.
The executive orders were part of a larger pressure campaign the Trump White House waged against several large and well-known law firms with dozens of prominent lawyers.
Many were threatened with the loss of security clearances for its lawyers, blocked access to federal buildings and canceled meetings with executive branch agencies that the firms had on behalf of their clients, which are largely corporations. Those points of access to the federal government are all mainstays of Washington-based legal work.
Some — including Perkins Coie, which had sued to fight the executive order — made clear Trump’s opposition to a firm was an existential threat. Perkins Coie had long represented the Democratic Party and years ago backed a now-discredited dossier on Russian ties to the 2016 Trump campaign.
The firms argued that the executive orders, if they had survived in court challenges, had the potential to zap the firms’ client bases, force out business-generating partners and potentially shudder the businesses.
The four firms that sued had one thing in common: well-known work in Washington, especially in litigation.
Yet other national law firms under threat of similar Trump executive orders cut deals with the administration to stave off punishing executive orders.
Many agreed to change their approach to the clients they would take, especially by shifting the political leanings in the pro bono work they were willing to do, from liberal causes to more conservative ones.
Several prominent firms, including Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and Kirkland & Ellis, became known as “the capitulating firms” across the industry, after publicly announcing deals with the Trump administration.
Susman Godfrey’s statement Monday night hinting at this dynamic, saying “The Government has capitulated, which is a fitting end to its plainly unconstitutional attack.”
Boris Epshteyn, an outside adviser to Trump, who previously negotiated with several law firms that cut deals, flew with the president on Air Force One on Sunday from Palm Beach to Washington, DC.
Ephsteyn’s involvement in the deals has recently prompted inquiries on Capitol Hill from Democrats, which could continue for months, especially now with the reversal on the appeals.
Statements from the law firms Monday cheered what they believed were unequivocal wins. Some of the firms said Tuesday morning they would continue to defend themselves in court.
“Of course we defended ourselves when the President sought to punish and intimidate us because of the clients we represent and the values we hold,” the firm Susman Godfrey said in its statement Monday night.
Susman Godfrey had sued Trump contacts and Fox News after the 2020 election on behalf of the voting machine company Dominion. The Fox News defamation lawsuit resulted in a landmark settlement where the right-wing media outlet agreed to pay $787 million.
The four firms that chose to sue had to quickly recast themselves last year as adversaries to the administration, rather than continuing to hold themselves out as the types of firms with insider ties to the executive branch.
“The government’s decision to dismiss its appeal is clearly the right one,” Wilmer Hale, the largest of the four firms, said in a statement Monday night.
The firm had employed members of Mueller’s office that investigated Trump. “As we said from the outset, our challenge to the unlawful Executive Order was about defending our clients’ constitutional right to retain the counsel of their choosing and defending the rule of law. We are pleased these foundational principles were vindicated,” Wilmer Hale’s statement said.
Jenner & Block, a Chicago-founded firm with large Washington regulatory and litigation practices and a former partner who had worked on the Mueller investigation, noted in a statement on Monday that four different judges in DC’s district court ruled the executive orders unconstitutional.
Though the executive orders haven’t survived in court, they have widely curtailed large American law firms’ willingness to oppose the administration and represent progressive causes publicly.
Top Justice Department lawyers from the Biden and Obama administrations, for instance, have also found more difficulty in landing or staying at large law firms, as would be typical after prior administration changeovers in Washington, with some starting their own small white collar firms instead.
Despite the approach to the large law firms, the Justice Department has been unwavering in court seeking the ability to pull the security clearance of lawyer Mark Zaid, who runs a small self-named firm and regularly represents government whistleblowers. Zaid won a case at the lower court in DC challenging a Trump executive action targeting him, but the Justice Department appealed.
Zaid, noting the Justice Department dropping the cases against the four larger law firms, said on Monday, “My role is no different. I’m a lawyer representing clients yet I’ve been targeted for just doing my job protecting the rule of law.”
Zaid’s case still is set to be heard by the DC Circuit in the coming weeks.
“No president is permitted to broadly target or punish groups without appropriate due process, even under the guise of national security,” Zaid’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement on Monday.
This story has been updated with additional details.