Trump Organization Fires Lawyer as President Blasts Harvard Work

The Trump Organization fired a conservative lawyer who served as its ethics adviser hours after the president attacked him for helping Harvard University sue the administration.

The lawyer, William Burck of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan,was dismissed Thursday by Eric Trump, who runs the company with his brother Donald Jr. Earlier that morning, President Donald Trump urged his company to get “rid of him ASAP!”

“I view it as conflict and I will be moving in a different direction,” Eric Trump said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg News. Burck declined to comment.

Burck, who works on high-profile political and corporate cases, was hired by Harvard to help its president, Alan Garber, navigate Trump’s demands to force sweeping changes at the oldest and richest US university. Earlier this week, the school sued the administration for freezing $2.2 billion in federal funding.

At the time of his ethics appointment in January, Eric Trump wrote he was “proud” to announce Burck’s hiring, describing him as “one of the nation’s finest and most respected lawyers.” As the ethics adviser, Burck reviewed corporate decisions including transactions over $10 million and leases of space more than 40,000 square feet (3,716 square meters).

Harvard is part of a group of highly selective universities that the Trump administration has tried to force into policy changes by rescinding funding, threatening to revoke the visas of international students, and suggesting the Internal Revenue Service could take away their tax-exempt status.

The administration has framed its efforts as an initiative to fight antisemitism and enforce civil rights protections on campus. It has demanded changes at the country’s most elite schools while freezing federal funding to Columbia, Princeton, Cornell and Northwestern universities.

Read more: Harvard Bets on Conservative Lawyer to Fight Trump on Funds

President Trump launched a new broadside at Harvard on Thursday, accusing the school of being a “liberal mess.”

“Harvard is a threat to Democracy, with a lawyer, who represents me, who should therefore be forced to resign, immediately, or be fired,” he said in a post on Truth Social. Trump reiterated his criticisms of Harvard, saying it’s an antisemitic, far-left institution “with students being accepted from all over the World that want to rip our Country apart.”

When the US threatened to cut off billions in funding, Burck in a letter on April 14 that Harvard won’t “surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

Hours later, the administration froze $2.2 billion in multiyear grants, claiming Harvard is failing to combat antisemitism on campus and saying it must do more to overhaul governance, discipline, hiring and admissions policies.

Read More: How Harvard Is Fighting Trump’s Funding Freeze: QuickTake

While Harvard’s Garber said the university is tackling antisemitism, he has been adamant that the government can’t dictate what the school teaches and who it hires and admits.

In its lawsuit, Harvard claims the funding freeze violates its First Amendment guarantee of free speech and the Administrative Procedures Act.

On Wednesday night, Harvard told a federal judge it’s eager to move quickly with its lawsuit, saying its doesn’t plan to ask for a temporary order blocking the government’s actions. Rather, it will “expeditiously” pursue a final judgment on its claim that the administration violated federal regulations.

“Until set aside by this court, the freeze order, as well as the looming threat of additional cuts, chills Harvard’s exercise of its First Amendment rights and puts vital medical, scientific, technological, and other research at risk,” lawyers for Harvard wrote.

The attorneys told US District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston they will ask her to set deadlines for the government to produce records of its decision-making process that the university will use to make its case that the government violated the Administrative Procedure Act.

Read More: Harvard Case Judge Is Obama Appointee Who Oversaw Race Bias Suit

(Updates with Trump Organization’s dismissal of Burck)

--With assistance from Robert Burnson and Pierre Paulden.

To contact the reporters on this story:
David Voreacos in New York at dvoreacos@bloomberg.net;
Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net

Anthony Aarons, Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou

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