[Trumps candidacy and his administration were shaped, in no small
part, by Jones Day, one of the most politically connected law firms in
DC.]
[[link removed]]

HOW LAWYERS FROM ONE GIANT DC FIRM INFLUENCED TRUMP’S SUPREME COURT
PICKS  
[[link removed]]


 

Terry Gross
September 13, 2022
NPR
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Trump's candidacy and his administration were shaped, in no small
part, by Jones Day, one of the most politically connected law firms in
DC. _

President Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices and nominated
274 individuals to federal judgeships. Journalist David Enrich says
many of those picks were influenced by lawyers from the firm of Jones
Day., Al Drago/Getty Images

 

Editor's note: Jones Day is an underwriter for NPR and has done work
for NPR in the past.

While campaigning for president in 2016, Donald Trump famously cast
himself as a Washington outsider, someone who would "drain the swamp
[[link removed]]"
of special interests and cronyism. But_ New York Times_ journalist
David Enrich notes that both Trump's candidacy and his administration
were shaped, in no small part, by Jones Day, one of the most
politically connected law firms in DC.

For much of Jones Day's history, it was a juggernaut in the field of
corporate litigation, raking in billions a year in fees from tobacco,
opioid, gun and oil companies, among many other giant corporations.
But, as Enrich writes in his book, _Servants of the Damned, _the
firm became particularly embroiled in politics during the Trump
administration.

"They were more embedded in the Trump administration than any law firm
I can think of in any past presidential administration," Enrich says.
"Throughout the White House and the Justice Department, as well as
other agencies, basically, everywhere you looked, you would find a
once and future Jones Day lawyer."

Enrich points out that Don McGahn, a prominent Jones Day lawyer, left
the firm to become Trump's White House counsel. McGahn assumed the
responsibility of picking the judges Trump would nominate to the
federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

"One of the core kind of tenets of McGahn's judicial philosophy was
this real antipathy toward what he calls derisively 'the
administrative state,'" Enrich says. "And one of the biggest results
of that is that it translates into judges who no longer give nearly as
much deference to the rights and authority of federal agencies as had
been the norm."

Enrich says lawyers from Jones Day cycled back and forth between the
Trump administration and private practice, where they would go right
back to representing corporate clients — in some cases with
interests before the Trump administration.

"The notion that this outsider trying to shake things up would turn to
a firm like Jones Day to staff his administration and help pick his
judges and things like that, it is really antithetical to that,"
Enrich says. "When I think of the swamp and I think when Trump thinks
of the swamp, there are few swampier things than that type of inside
baseball lobbying."

 

 

Interview highlights

ON THE OUTSIZED ROLE JONES DAY PLAYED IN THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

Servants of the Damned, by David Enrich / Harper Collins

Starting in 2015, the law firm represented his campaign, and they did
so through the 2016 cycle and then again the 2020 campaign, that was
work that basically started on Inauguration Day of 2017. And so they
were front and center on both of his presidential campaigns, but they
were not representing him personally. ...

The White House counsel, Don McGahn, was a very prominent Jones Day
lawyer, and he surrounded himself in the White House with several
senior Jones Day partners and associates who he brought with him. At
the Justice Department, the solicitor general, Noel Francisco, was
once and future Jones Day partner. And in the upper echelons of both
in the civil division of the Justice Department you had some of the
people right beneath the attorney general were from Jones Day. You had
someone at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission, the Commerce Department, on and on the list
goes.

ON JONES DAY ACCOMPLISHING POLITICAL INTERESTS ONCE TRUMP WAS IN
OFFICE

Shortly after Trump became president, Jones Day lawyers, both inside
the administration and outside the administration, those still at the
firm, started accomplishing things that they had long sought to
accomplish but had not been able to do. And the clearest example of
this to me is a series of lawsuits that Jones Day had brought on
behalf of a bunch of Catholic organizations that were basically
challenging an important provision of Obamacare, the Affordable Care
Act. ... One of the first things that [the Trump] administration does
with the help of Don McGahn, is they basically say they're going to
end an Obama administration policy that sought to require employers to
provide contraception coverage for their employees, which was part of
Obamacare. And this was the subject of the lawsuit. So right on the
face, it represented a big win for Jones Day and its clients.

ON JONES DAY'S POLITICAL AGENDA

The law firm isn't a monolith, and I think it's important to kind of
say that at the outset. And this is a law firm that has something like
2,500 lawyers in dozens of countries all over the world. And like any
large organization or large law firm, there are employees and lawyers
at Jones Day that have, I think, a wide range of political views
ranging from far left to far right. What sets Jones apart is the
degree to which the leadership of the firm is fairly uniform in their
conservative thinking. ...

Their agenda ... ranged from lots of deregulation and really getting
the government out of the affairs of businesses to a very large
extent, and then also an agenda of what I think the right people on
the right would call "religious liberty." And I think people on the
left and to a certain degree, people in the center would say much
dramatically eroding the separation of church and state in a way that
allows religion to play a much more prominent role in public and
political life.

ON HOW DON MCGAHN, FORMER JONES DAY LAWYER, ENDED UP PICKING SCOTUS
NOMINEES FOR TRUMP

Shortly after Trump was elected, Mitch McConnell gave some advice to
Don McGahn. The advice was that instead of relying on a committee at
the White House to debate and pick nominees for the Supreme Court and
other federal courts, McConnell's advice was, "Look, you should get
Trump's permission to just do this by yourself. You alone should have
the power to pick the judges that Trump will nominate." McGahn liked
the sound of that. He proposed it to Trump and Trump when he offered
McGahn, the job of White House counsel, readily agreed to this. And so
McGahn, very quickly, before Trump even was sworn in as president, all
of a sudden was sitting on this enormous power that was really quite
unusual historically. And he was the one who would be picking the
people that Trump nominated to all sorts of federal courts.

ON MCGAHN GOING BACK TO JONES DAY AFTER WORKING IN THE TRUMP
ADMINISTRATION

He came right back, got a big promotion, got a bunch more money. And
he was kind of the first in what would become a whole parade of people
who went from the Trump administration back into the law firm. A lot
of these were people who had started off of Jones Day, then went to
the Trump administration and then returned. But there were also a lot
of people who had not previously worked at Jones Day, had worked at
maybe at other law firms. And with the return of McGahn, Jones Day
became essentially a refuge for veterans of the Trump administration,
who many of whom had really developed quite controversial backstories
and had taken quite controversial and polarizing and legally dubious
actions while in the Trump administration and therefore, I think, were
pretty radioactive for many other big law firms. But Jones Day
welcomed many of them with open arms.

ON JONES DAY TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE JUDICIAL REVOLUTION IT SET IN
MOTION

It's now bringing cases through the Supreme Court and through the
lower courts that were basically made possible by this deluge of very
conservative federal judges that are now on the benches of many
courts. So just in the Supreme Court's past term, which was obviously
one of the most radical and farthest reaching the Supreme Court terms,
certainly of my lifetime, and Jones Day played pivotal roles in some
of these cases. And I think the biggest one was the case, the West
Virginia versus EPA 
[[link removed]]case
that dramatically hemmed in the power of the EPA to regulate carbon
emissions. And that was brought on behalf of the Jones Day client, a
big coal company.

Jones Day was the law firm that basically ended the eviction
moratorium
[[link removed]] during
the pandemic that the Biden administration had imposed. And Jones Day,
just reading the tea leaves and talking to their lawyers now, it's
quite clear that they are plotting a wide range of attacks on the
power of the federal government to oversee private businesses and
private companies in a way that goes back to Don McGahn and his
colleagues' hatred of the so-called administrative state. And they are
now in a position to be able to much more forcefully advocate those
positions and be successful in their advocacy — thanks to all of the
judges that Trump, at McGahn's direction and with McConnell's support,
managed to get on to virtually every federal court in the country.

_Sam Briger and Seth Kelley produced and edited this interview for
broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan
adapted it for the Web._

_TERRY GROSS began her radio career in 1973 at public radio station
WBFO in Buffalo, New York. There she hosted and produced several arts,
women's and public affairs programs, including This Is Radio, a live,
three-hour magazine program that aired daily. Two years later, she
joined the staff of WHYY-FM in Philadelphia as producer and host
of Fresh Air, then a local, daily interview and music program. In
1985, WHYY-FM launched a weekly half-hour edition of Fresh Air with
Terry Gross, which was distributed nationally by NPR. Since 1987, a
daily, one-hour national edition of Fresh Air has been produced by
WHYY-FM. The program is broadcast on 566 stations and became the first
non-drive time show in public radio history to reach more than five
million listeners each week in fall 2008, a presidential election
season. In fall 2011, Fresh Air reached 4.4 million listeners a
week._

_FRESH AIR WITH TERRY GROSS has received a number of awards,
including the prestigious Peabody Award in 1994 for its "probing
questions, revelatory interviews and unusual insight." America Women
in Radio and Television presented Gross with a Gracie Award in 1999 in
the category of National Network Radio Personality. In 2003, she
received the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Edward R. Murrow
Award for her "outstanding contributions to public radio" and for
advancing the "growth, quality and positive image of radio." In 2007,
Gross received the Literarian Award. In 2011, she received the Authors
Guild Award for Distinguished Service to the Literary Community._

_Gross is the author of All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with
Writers, Actors, Musicians and Artists, published by Hyperion in
2004._

_Born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Gross received a bachelor's degree
in English and M.Ed. in communications from the State University of
New York at Buffalo. Gross was recognized with the Columbia Journalism
Award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 2008
and an Honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Princeton University
in 2002. She received a Distinguished Alumni Award in 1993 and Doctor
of Humane Letters in 2007, both from SUNY–Buffalo. She also received
a Doctor of Letters from Haverford College in 1998 and Honorary Doctor
of Letters from Drexel University in 1989._

* Donald Trump
[[link removed]]
* Supreme Court
[[link removed]]
* Big Law
[[link removed]]
* lobbyists
[[link removed]]
* ultra-right
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]