Since taking office, Trump has issued a series of executive orders that unlawfully impose a broad range of harms on certain law firms against whom Trump has developed a personal vendetta because of the firms’ viewpoints, advocacy for clients, and hiring practices. These punishing measures include ending the firm’s government contracts, revoking attorneys’ security clearances, and demanding that government contractors disclose business with these firms and face their own investigations. The threatened investigations would subject them to onerous proceedings, force them to turn over sensitive employee information to a hostile administration, and leave the firms vulnerable to targeted executive orders in the future.
To obtain recission of the unconstitutional orders or to avoid baseless investigations, firms began to give in to Trump’s demands. He obtained nearly $1 billion in free legal services for himself, his allies, and his pet projects. Trump’s demands infringe on these firms’ independence and First Amendment rights and will significantly impact and drain their financial resources.
The extortion of free legal assistance from large law firms is a brazen, illegal abuse of power that attacks attorney independence and undermines the adversarial system that is at the heart of our country’s rule of law. We won’t let it stand.
Sign if you agree: State and local prosecutors in New York and Pennsylvania must launch criminal investigations into Trump’s extortion or coercion of law firms operating in their states.
