President Trump’s flurry of executive orders hobbling high-profile law firms goes after key players who spent years trying to prove Mr. Trump colluded with Russia to win the White House.
Mr. Trump’s entire first term was clouded by accusations and a years-long probe into allegations he colluded with Russian President Vladimir Putin to win the 2016 election. The president believes several prominent law firms played a critical role in helping to create the false narrative and should be shut out of his administration because of it.
Mr. Trump signed an executive order stripping Democrat law firm Perkins Coie LLP of security clearances and government contracts. The president cited, among several criticisms, the law firm’s role on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign in producing a fake opposition research dossier about Mr. Trump that featured an alleged “pee tape” involving Russian prostitutes.
Perkins Coie “had a very big hand in it,” said Dan Backer, chief counsel for the conservative Coolidge Reagan Foundation, which forced a Federal Election Commission probe into the Clinton campaign and Perkins Coie’s involvement in the matter.
Mr. Trump similarly signed orders to freeze out Chicago law firm Jenner & Block, singling out Andrew Weissmann, a former lawyer at the firm who worked on the special counsel investigation, led by Robert S. Mueller III, into whether Mr. Trump colluded with the Russians. Mr. Weissmann is a vocal Trump critic. He claims the Trump campaign knew about and accepted help from the Russians, even after the Mueller investigation concluded there was no evidence Trump’s team knowingly conspired with them. Mr. Weissmann said the Mueller probe did not delve deep enough into the matter out of fear Mr. Trump would shut it down.
“I think that in the last few years, we have seen the erosion of norms and the rule of law,” Mr. Weissmann said in an NPR interview a month before the 2020 presidential election. Mr. Weissmann continued to promote reports claiming Russian interference on behalf of Mr. Trump during his 2024 campaign.
Mr. Trump called Mr. Weissmann “a bad guy,” during a White House meeting last week as he signed the executive order curtailing Jenner & Block from government work and stripping the firm’s lawyers of security clearances.
A third executive order from Mr. Trump shuts out WilmerHale, the law firm that hired Mr. Mueller and his two top aides in the Russia probe. Mr. Mueller retired from the firm in 2021.
“Mueller’s investigation epitomizes the weaponization of government, yet WilmerHale claimed he ‘embodies the highest value of our firm and profession,’” Mr. Trump wrote in the order cutting off the firm from government contracts and security clearances. “Mueller’s ‘investigation’ upended the lives of public servants in my Administration who were summoned before ‘prosecutors’ with the effect of interfering in their ability to fulfill the mandates of my first term agenda. This weaponization of the justice system must not be rewarded, let alone condoned.”
Perkins Coie played a prominent role in generating the Russian collusion hoax by funding the Steele Dossier, which made outlandish and unverified claims that Russia had cultivated a years-long relationship with Mr. Trump and provided damaging information about Hillary Clinton to aid his presidential bid.
Among its sordid details was a claim that Mr. Trump was beholden to Mr. Putin because the Russians possessed a videotape of his sexual exploits with prostitutes at Moscow’s Ritz-Carton Hotel. The alleged tape, which apparently never existed, supposedly depicted Mr. Trump ordering prostitutes to urinate on a hotel bed in a room where the Obamas once stayed.
The dossier started with lawyer Marc Elias, then a partner at Perkins Coie, working on behalf of the Clinton campaign. He hired the research firm Fusion GPS, which paid former British spy Christopher Steele to find dirt from Russian sources on Mr. Trump. It resulted in the now-discredited dossier.
The dossier was used in part to justify secret warrants allowing the FBI to spy on the Trump campaign. The dossier’s details were leaked to the media, undermining public confidence in Mr. Trump’s campaign victory and his presidency and helping spur Mr. Mueller’s 22-month-long special counsel investigation into Russian interference. The probe cost $32 million and ultimately found no evidence Mr. Trump colluded with the Kremlin.
“The dossier was built on obviously materially false information that was paid for,” Mr. Backer said. “It should never have been used in that context.”
Perkins Coie, Mr. Backer said, “contributed to millions of dollars worth of wasted money pursuing a frivolous investigation into a presidential candidate over allegations that they had to pay Russian intelligence to give them.”
Mr. Backer led his foundation’s 2018 complaint that the DNC and the Clinton campaign had misrepresented payments that funded the Steele Dossier, disguising them as legal fees through Perkins Coie.
In 2022, the DNC and the Clinton campaign agreed to settle the matter by paying a $113,000 fine.
Perkins Coie did not respond to an inquiry from The Times. The firm is suing to block Mr. Trump’s executive order.
In a statement, the firm’s managing partner, Bill Malley, said the executive order “violates core constitutional rights, including the rights to free speech and due process.”
He called the order “an unlawful attack on the freedom of all Americans to select counsel of their choice without fear of retribution or punishment from the government.”
Federal judges have partially blocked Mr. Trump’s orders freezing out WilmerHale and Jenner & Block.
“Our firm has a longstanding tradition of representing a wide range of clients, including in matters against administrations of both parties,” a WilmerHale spokesman said in a statement provided to The Times. “The Executive Order references Robert Mueller, who retired from our firm in 2021, and had a long, distinguished career in public service, from his time as a Marine Corps officer in Vietnam to his leadership of the FBI in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks. We remain committed to providing the expert representation that our clients are entitled to and rely upon. We look forward to pursuing all appropriate remedies to this unlawful order.”
Mr. Trump’s executive orders against the law firms go beyond the Russia collusion hoax and target their efforts to undermine his agenda through lawsuits filed on behalf of their Democrat clients. The Perkins Coie executive order, for example, criticizes the firm’s work on behalf of clients like Democrat megadonor George Soros seeking to overturn voter ID and other election laws.
Mr. Backer believes the president will ultimately prevail in shutting out the law firms.
“The executive branch has broad authority to decide who it wants to work with and the idea that the court can force the executive branch to spend money on people that have worked to intentionally stop the agenda of that executive branch is nonsense,” Mr. Backer said.
