While several prominent law firms have tried to appease Donald Trump in response to his aggressive and unprecedented campaign against the industry, a handful have responded to presidential attacks by pushing back. As NBC News reported, those efforts are ongoing.

Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP filed a motion [Tuesday] seeking to permanently block Trump’s executive order targeting the firm, which previously employed Robert Mueller, who led the Russia investigation after the 2016 election.

“Simply put, blacklisting and sanctioning law firms for representing the President’s political opponents, devoting resources to causes the President dislikes, or hiring attorneys who have investigated the President is anathema to our constitutional order,” the filing says.

“The Order avowedly—and severely—punishes WilmerHale for its attorneys’ advocacy on behalf of clients and causes the President does not like. And it does so for the avowed purpose of deterring other law firms from engaging in the same constitutionally protected conduct,” it added.

Hours after the firm filed its motion, Trump spoke at a White House event related to his efforts to boost the coal industry, and he suggested that he’d direct some of the law firms that have already surrendered to him to work on coal mining–related cases in support of the industry.

And then he kept talking.

“Have you noticed that lots of law firms have been signing up with Trump?” the president said, referring to himself in the third person. “$100 million, another $100 million for, uh, damages that they’ve done. They give you $100 million and then they announce that, ‘But we have done nothing wrong.’ And I agree, they’ve done nothing wrong. But what the hell, they give me a lot of money considering they’ve done nothing wrong.”

It’s an open question as to whether or not the Republican was sincere, but some of the targeted firms have argued that Trump signed punitive orders to attack them without cause. And now the president has declared, out loud and on camera, that he agreed that the firms did “nothing wrong.”

On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, two Democratic lawmakers — Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the ranking member on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s investigations panel, and Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee — launched an investigation this week, contacting firms directly about whether the White House’s scheme effectively constitutes extortion.

The Democratic lawmakers wrote that the executive orders targeting law firms were “in blatant violation of the rights guaranteed to all Americans by the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments of the United States Constitution” and were “part of a broader effort by President Trump to use the powers of the presidency to intimidate and silence his perceived enemies.” The executive orders “have turned into an illegal shakedown of the legal profession,” they wrote.

“If every law firm targeted by the President were to accede to his unlawful demands, the resulting threat to Americans’ constitutional protections would erode our democratic values and cherished civil liberties, as well as cost the legal profession dearly and for many years to come,” one of the letters stated.

As for the larger industry, more than 500 law firms of various sizes last week signed onto a joint statement of support for Perkins Coie, one of the firms that’s fighting back against a Trump order.

As for the firms that chose the path of appeasement and capitulation, they’re increasingly facing backlashes, including from within their own teams.