The law firms that haven’t caved to President Donald Trump’s revenge orders have been doing well in court. One of the latest examples came Wednesday in a hearing involving the Perkins Coie firm, at which a federal judge grilled an administration lawyer.
NBC News reported that U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell criticized Justice Department attorney Richard Lawson’s lack of basic information, as well as what she called the DOJ’s “temper tantrum.”
Howell previously granted a temporary restraining order to Perkins Coie, which had argued that Trump’s executive order targeting the firm was “unprecedented” and “unconstitutional from top to bottom.” The president’s March 6 order cited the firm’s “dishonest and dangerous activity” stemming from its association with figures loathed in GOP circles: Hillary Clinton and George Soros. The order sought to restrict the firm’s access to federal buildings and instructed agencies not to engage with its personnel and to terminate contracts held by firm clients.
Howell had previously told government officials to send a memo to agencies telling them about the restraining order. But she didn’t like how they went about it in calling her order “erroneous.” NBC News reported that the Obama appointee said that it struck her as a “temper tantrum” worthy of a 3-year-old, not the Justice Department.
Of course, that’s not what any lawyer want to hear about a client. But beyond the theatrics, the bigger problem is that Howell and other judges are swiftly ruling against the underlying orders, thus far backing the wisdom of the firms that have chosen to fight back. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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