Humiliation as Trump defangs elite law firms that cut deals with him

The New York Times reports that once formidable law firms have gone lapdog after striking deals with President Donald Trump in his second term.

Attorney Norm Eisen, a leader of the legal resistance against Trump’s Constitutional incursions, is finding that white shoe law firm Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp is now keeping its head down and refusing to offer advice as Trump maneuvers to interfere in the midterm elections.

“He was one of the greatest champions of voting and civil rights — and for democracy — in the country, and to have someone like that advising you, resourcing you and fighting for you was indispensable,” Eisen told the Times

But Paul Weiss was one of nine firms that struck deals with the administration to avoid Trump’s threat of crippling executive orders stripping progressive law firms and individual lawyers’ federal contracts and security clearances. Now the company is effectively neutered and sidelined, according to Eisen and a lawyer with direct knowledge of the matter.

“The void left by Paul Weiss is only a sliver of the impact of the deals the nine firms made with Mr. Trump early in his second term,” reports the Times. “In exchange, they pledged to do nearly a billion dollars in free legal work to causes Mr. Trump champions, casting doubt on whether they would be willing to stand up to the president.”

The Times notes that the final stretch of the midterm elections offers clues into just how much damage Trump did to the American legal system by brandishing threats from the White House. Once the go-to firms for legal advice and work against democratic threats, few of the nine firms are now publicly involved in the major legal efforts to “check Trump and his administration’s attempts to meddle,” according to a review of public documents and interviews with democracy advocates, election lawyers and voting rights litigators shows.

In fact, critics say the deafening silence from what was once democracy’s most able champions has raised worries about whether the legal profession is equipped to respond to the bullying Trump administration, which the Times reports has “already begun to file litigation intended to sow confusion about the outcome of the election.”

“Some of the firms have scrubbed their websites of their storied histories working on voting rights cases. At one firm that made a deal with Mr. Trump, several lawyers are quietly volunteering to help voting rights causes, hoping that their bosses do not find out, according to a lawyer at one of the firms who spoke on the condition of anonymity,” reports the Times.

Worse, interviews with attorneys suggest Trump’s chilling effect on big name firms has extended to several top 100 U.S. firms that did not cut deals with Trump. According to interviews, neighboring law firms now fear being similarly targeted, and they have avoided politically sensitive cases that draw Trump’s ire.

“I’ve been told, ‘We don’t do civil rights work involving the administration anymore,’ and, ‘We don’t do voting rights work anymore,’’’ said John Powers, the legal director at the Advancement Project, which litigates voting rights cases by joining with better-financed private firms.

Most recently, the Times reports that when the Advancement Project filed suit with the N.A.A.C.P. against some of the Trump DOJ’s election-monitoring tactics, it had to initially do so on its own without a private partner.

“In some cases, Mr. Powers added, partners at firms working with the Advancement Project pulled back their support, dropped out entirely or agreed only to help on the condition that they not be named publicly,” reports the Times.

“All too often we’re having to find workarounds because we don’t have the support,” Powers told the Times.

The Times added that Paul Weiss and seven other firms “did not respond to questions asking for examples of voting rights cases or other matters the firm is working on in opposing the administration.”