Trump-Targeted Law Firms Fight DOJ Bid to Revive Orders (2)

President Donald Trump’s attacks on major law firms “pose a severe threat to the legal profession and the rule of law,” attorneys for WilmerHale told a federal appeals court Friday.

Trump hit the firm with a “draconian” executive order in retaliation “for representing clients and causes he dislikes and expressing viewpoints with which he disagrees,” Paul Clement, the prominent litigator representing WilmerHale, wrote.

The firm and three others—Jenner & Block, Susman Godfrey, and Perkins Coie—urged the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to uphold rulings striking down Trump’s orders against them. They cited DOJ’s short-lived decision to back out of its appeal and Wall Street law firm Paul Weiss’ deal with the White House to resolve a similar executive order in briefs filed Friday.

DOJ has until April 10 to reply before all parties meet in a DC courthouse for oral arguments on May 14.

The firms said the Paul Weiss White House deal underscores the threat posed by Trump’s attacks. Paul Weiss and eight other firms that later followed suit pledged a total of $940 million in free legal services on shared causes with the White House.

“WilmerHale and its co-appellees separately challenged the executive orders leveled against them,” Wilmer said. “Paul Weiss chose a different path. In exchange for formal rescission of an order purporting to identify it as a national security risk, Paul Weiss promised ‘a remarkable change of course.’”

Trump issued the orders shortly after returning to the White House last year, largely targeting the firms over their ties to lawyers involved in investigations and cases against the president. He called out WilmerHale for its connections to Robert Mueller, the former special counsel who led an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Trump went after Jenner for its affiliation to Andrew Weissmann, who was part of Mueller’s team.

The president said the moves—scrapping security clearances, blocking access to federal buildings, and threatening government contracts for the firms’ clients—were meant to address national security risks and hiring discrimination in Big Law. Four federal judges disagreed, ruling that Trump violated the Constitution’s free speech and due process protections.

DOJ initially said in a March 2 court filing that it would drop the appeal, allowing the lower court decisions blocking the orders to stand. It reversed course less than 24 hours later, with a Trump administration official later saying the previous filing was inadvertent.

Courts “cannot tell the President how to handle national security clearances,” deputy associate attorney general Abhishek Kambli wrote in March in an appellate brief. “And they cannot interfere with Presidential directives instructing agencies to investigate racial discrimination that violates federal civil rights laws.”

Jenner is represented by a team of Cooley LLP lawyers, including Biden solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar. The firm highlighted DOJ’s about-face in its court filing.

“Faced with defending the indefensible—and after wavering on whether to maintain this appeal at all—the government has little to say,” Jenner said in its brief. “On the merits, it protests that the Order has nothing to do with Jenner’s representations or associations, but instead was prompted by unspecific and unsubstantiated allegations of hiring discrimination. To read the Order is to refute that argument.”

The firm also took aim at Paul Weiss, which it said “capitulated” to Trump, and others who opted to strike deals with the White House.

“As the White House put it, the settlements built the President ‘an unrivaled network of Lawyers’ to advance his agenda,” the firm said in its court filing. “Jenner chose a different path: suing to safeguard its ability to represent its clients.”

Susman Godfrey is represented by Donald Verrilli, a solicitor general during the Obama administration. Perkins Coie is represented by lawyers at elite DC trial firm Williams & Connolly, well-known for doing battle with federal government lawyers.

In the opening lines of its brief, Perkins said DOJ’s abrupt reversal of the decision to drop the case signaled its lack of confidence in the merits of its argument.

“The Order is indefensible,” Perkins said in its brief, authored by a legal team led by Dane Butswinkas. “No doubt, that is why the Department of Justice previously declined to defend it in this Court, moving to dismiss this appeal before abruptly reversing course at the President’s direction.”

The case is: Jenner and Block v. DOJ, D.C. Cir., 25-05265, 3/27/26