Headed into this week, Donald Trump’s unprecedented campaign against the legal profession focused on eight prominent law firms — some of which responded to the offensive by fighting back, while others preferred capitulation.
The one thing they all have in common: The president conceded that the firms have “done nothing wrong,” but he’s targeting them anyway as part of a damaging and authoritarian-style attack.
This week, as Above The Law noted, the list grew from eight firms to nine.
Donald Trump signed a likely unconstitutional Executive Order targeting elite litigation firm Susman Godfrey. Similar to the other EOs aimed at Biglaw, the order purports to strip Susman attorneys of access to federal buildings, amongst other provisions.
As the president signed the order Wednesday, he noted that his target list included five other firms, which he did not identify.
White House aide Will Scharf told Reuters the latest order resembles previous actions the Trump administration has taken against law firms that it says have been involved in the “weaponization of government or actions of lawfare.”
As for whether the latest Trump target will choose appeasement, Susman Godfrey insisted that it will not. “There is no question that we will fight this unconstitutional order,” the firm said in a written statement. “We believe in the rule of law, and we take seriously our duty to uphold it.”
The broader question, however, is why the president added this specific firm to his enemies list.
As a rule, there’s been little mystery as to why the other firms were targeted. Indeed, the White House made little effort to hide its motivations, lashing out at firms because they hired lawyers the president doesn’t like and/or worked on cases that Trump disapproves of.
But with Susman Godfrey, it’s not quite as obvious — and while the official order was over 900 words long, none went into detail about the firm’s alleged transgressions. (The order noted that Susman Godfrey “administers a program where it offers financial awards and employment opportunities only to ‘students of color,’” which Team Trump apparently finds outrageous, though this hardly warranted an aggressive response from the Oval Office.)
So why did Trump target this specific firm? Many of the news reports about the executive order noted that Susman Godfrey represented Dominion Voting Systems in the defamation case against Fox News, and it seems plausible that the president would want to punish a firm that clashed with a politically aligned media outlet. Reuters’ report noted that Susman Godfrey “is also representing Dominion in defamation lawsuits against the president’s former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, and others related to false claims that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump.” It’s also of interest that firm represents The New York Times in its copyright suit against OpenAI and Microsoft. But let’s also not forget that it was just last month when Media Matters filed suit against Elon Musk’s X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter), and the progressive media watchdog is represented in the case by — you guessed it — Susman Godfrey. To be sure, I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that Trump signed an order targeting the firm at the behest of his top campaign donor, but as the dispute unfolds, it’s a detail worth keeping in mind.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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