Paul Weiss Alumni Call Trump Agreement ‘Craven Surrender’ (2)

About 90 Paul Weiss former associates signed their names to a letter Monday criticizing chairman Brad Karp’s deal with the Trump administration.

Karp’s decision turned the firm into a “poster child for the administration’s efforts to silence dissent” in the legal field, the associates wrote in the letter released by nonprofit advocacy group Common Cause.

“Instead of a ringing defense of the values of democracy, we witnessed a craven surrender to, and thus complicity in, what is perhaps the gravest threat to the independence of the legal profession since at least the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy,” the associates said.

Under the March 20 deal, President Donald Trump’s White House rescinded an executive order that stripped the firm’s security clearances, threatened federal contracts held by clients, and told agency heads to restrict its lawyers’ access to federal government buildings. In return, Karp pledged $40 million in pro bono legal services that support Trump administration goals and agreed to an audit of the firm’s diversity hiring practices.

A representative for Paul Weiss said the firm has more than 4,100 living alumni. Karp, in a firmwide letter over the weekend, said it was “very likely” Paul Weiss couldn’t survive a protracted dispute with the Trump presidency.

The associates in their letter called on the firm to issue an “unambiguous statement” that it adheres to principles essential to its mission and that it rejects the administration’s attacks on courts and the rule of law.

Trump’s order against Paul Weiss was the third of three directives that targeted law firms over their work with perceived enemies of the president. On Feb. 25, Trump revoked security clearances of Covington & Burling lawyers working with former special counsel Jack Smith. On March 6, the president issued an order against Perkins Coie that prompted a lawsuit by the firm against the Trump administration.

Trump, when asked at the White House on Monday about his law firm executive orders, said others want to settle. “I just think that the law firms have to behave themselves,” he said.