Trump Tests How Many Law Firms He Can Destroy Before Someone Stops Him

It took exactly three days for Trump to prove that Judge Beryl Howell’s “Alice in Wonderland” comparison wasn’t just apt, but prescient. After the judge blocked his executive order attempting to destroy Perkins Coie for representing his political opponents, Trump has now issued an almost identical order targeting another major law firm, Paul Weiss. Because when you’re living in Wonderland, why stop at just one “off with their heads”?

Last week’s executive order targeting Perkins Coie represented an unprecedented abuse of executive power to punish lawyers for representing political opponents. The court’s swift rejection made clear just how far beyond constitutional bounds Trump had stepped. But rather than accept those bounds, Trump has decided to test just how many law firms he can threaten before someone stops him.

The targeting of Paul Weiss isn’t just another swing at Trump’s enemies list — it’s a calculated escalation. Like Perkins Coie, Paul Weiss is a large, well-known law firm, representing a long list of major companies, handling all sorts of corporate law issues, from mergers and acquisitions to cybersecurity. But Trump’s new executive order makes it crystal clear that the firm’s real crime was daring to challenge his actions.

The executive order reads like a confession of unconstitutional retaliation, explicitly laying out two “crimes” that… are not crimes. Or even unethical or problematic things. It’s just doing regular law work that just so happened to target Donald Trump and his violent supporters.

First, a Paul Weiss partner dared to represent the DC Attorney General in litigation over January 6th:

In 2021, a Paul Weiss partner and former leading prosecutor in the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller brought a pro bono suit against individuals alleged to have participated in the events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, on behalf of the District of Columbia Attorney General.

And second — perhaps even more telling — the firm hired someone who tried to hold Trump accountable while serving as a prosecutor:

In 2022, Paul Weiss hired unethical attorney Mark Pomerantz, who had previously left Paul Weiss to join the Manhattan District Attorney’s office solely to manufacture a prosecution against me and who, according to his co-workers, unethically led witnesses in ways designed to implicate me. After being unable to convince even Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg that a fraud case was feasible, Pomerantz engaged in a media campaign to gin up support for this unwarranted prosecution.

That’s it. That’s the justification for trying to destroy one of America’s premier law firms — they represented clients Trump didn’t like and hired someone who investigated him. The nakedness of this retaliation should be terrifying. Trump isn’t even bothering with the usual pretense of national security or public interest — he’s essentially declaring that investigating or opposing him legally is grounds for destruction.

The executive order also mentions some nonsense about DEI, which is just Trump continuing to pretend that that shit matters to anyone, but also reinforces just how unconstitutional all of this is.

The mechanisms of destruction in this order are identical to those used against Perkins Coie — and just as constitutionally grotesque. First, it weaponizes federal contracts: any company doing business with the government (which includes most major tech companies and countless others) must now effectively choose between keeping Paul Weiss as counsel or keeping their government contracts. It’s economic assassination dressed up as executive action.

But the most chilling provision might be the one about federal buildings. As with the Perkins Coie order, the order allows the government to bar any Paul Weiss lawyer from entering any federal building if officials decide their presence would be “inconsistent with the interests of the United States.” Think about what that means: they could be blocked from entering federal courthouses to represent their clients. While the DOJ suggested that kind of result would be “unlikely” in the hearing over Perkins Coie, it didn’t deny that the order could be used that way.

This needs to be called out for what it is: a president is literally trying to physically prevent lawyers from doing their jobs because they represented the “wrong” clients or hired the “wrong” people.

There’s no pretense of due process. No actual allegations of wrongdoing. Just naked retaliation against lawyers for doing lawyer things — representing clients in court and hiring experienced prosecutors. The fact that Trump is doubling down on this strategy mere days after a federal judge called the same exact thing unconstitutional shows exactly how far his administration is willing to go to destroy any mechanism of accountability.

The silence from self-proclaimed defenders of limited government is deafening. The same voices that spent years spinning conspiracy theories about the Biden administration’s supposed “weaponization” of executive power through “lawfare,” are mysteriously quiet when faced with actual, documented attempts to destroy law firms for representing the “wrong” clients.

This goes far beyond partisan hypocrisy. What we’re witnessing is the methodical dismantling of the legal profession’s ability to challenge executive power. Today it’s firms that represented Democrats or investigated Trump. Tomorrow it could be anyone who challenges or pushes back on what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing. This is a direct assault on any attempt to hold this administration accountable.

When a president can simply declare “off with their heads” to any law firm that dares to represent opposition, we’ve moved well past constitutional crisis into genuine authoritarianism.

The courts blocked the first attempt. Now they’ll need to block this one too. But the real question is: how many more law firms will Trump target before either Congress or the courts put a permanent stop to this abuse of power? And how many firms will think twice about representing the next client challenging executive overreach?

Trump isn’t just acting like a mad king — he’s become one, complete with his “off with their heads” declarations against any who dare challenge him. His supporters in Congress can no longer pretend otherwise. The only question left is whether they’ll help him destroy everything or finally use their authority to stop him.