Trump Punished Lawyers for Their Clients. Four Judges Struck His Orders Down

The President Made Legal Representation a Government Target

President Donald Trump used federal contracts, security clearances and access to government buildings to punish lawyers for representing clients and causes he opposed, four federal judges found.¹²³⁴ He issued the orders himself, naming the firms and the legal work that drew his anger.⁵⁶³⁴ Perkins Coie lost clients.¹ WilmerHale kept losing them after a judge temporarily blocked its order.³ Whistleblower lawyer Mark Zaid's clients lost their chosen counsel in classified matters.⁷ This was retaliation through the machinery lawyers need to do their jobs.

On March 6, 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14230, which accused Perkins Coie of "dishonest and dangerous activity" and attacked its work for Hillary Clinton and its challenges to election laws.⁵ He ordered agencies to suspend its employees' security clearances, stop providing government resources, limit access to federal buildings and restrict official contact and federal hiring.⁵ He required federal contractors to disclose business with the firm and directed agencies to take steps, to the extent allowed by law, to terminate contracts for which the firm performed services.⁵ The threat reached the firm's clients, not just its own dealings with Washington.⁵

All of Perkins Coie's top fifteen clients by revenue held federal contracts or subcontracts, and together they supplied almost a quarter of the firm's revenue, Judge Beryl Howell recounted.¹ Many had hired it for work unrelated to those contracts.¹

On March 25, Trump signed Executive Order 14246 against Jenner & Block, attacking its pro bono work and its rehiring of Andrew Weissmann, who had worked on Robert Mueller's investigation.⁶ Weissmann had not worked at Jenner for four years when Trump issued the order, Bates noted.² It imposed similar restrictions, as did his orders against WilmerHale and Susman Godfrey.⁶³⁴

Four Judges Rejected the Orders

Between May 2 and June 27, 2025, four judges of the U.S. District Court in Washington permanently blocked the sanctions against Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale and Susman Godfrey.¹²³⁴ Each found unconstitutional retaliation for protected advocacy.¹²³⁴ Leon and AliKhan also held that the orders violated the separation of powers by taking over the judiciary's authority to sanction lawyers for their conduct in court.³⁴

Judge John Bates identified the damage to lawyers beyond the targeted firm.²

Memorandum Opinion, Jenner & Block LLP v. U.S. Department of Justice²

It casts a chill over the whole of the legal profession, leaving lawyers around the country weighing the necessity of vigorous representation against the peril of crossing the federal government.

Judge Loren AliKhan's June ruling described the common result.⁴

Memorandum Opinion, Susman Godfrey LLP v. Executive Office of the President⁴

In the ensuing months, every court to have considered a challenge to one of these orders has found grave constitutional violations and permanently enjoined enforcement of the order in full.

Blocking the Orders Did Not Undo the Damage

On March 7, 2025, the day after Trump signed the order, a major government contractor that Perkins Coie had represented for 35 years hired other counsel for two pending matters, Howell recounted.¹ That same day another client withdrew all its work, as did a coalition of four clients.¹ Another hired a different firm after Perkins Coie lawyers were barred from a meeting; the firm's earlier work for that client had generated more than $1 million in fees.¹

Howell found that the departures caused significant revenue loss, and rejected the government's objection that this rested on inference, citing their timing, the longstanding relationships and the order's interference with representation.¹ Judge Richard Leon reported that WilmerHale was still losing clients after he temporarily blocked its order, while clients worried whether their lawyers could attend hearings, plea negotiations or regulatory meetings.³

Paul, Weiss negotiated a deal pledging the equivalent of $40 million in free legal services during Trump's term, and Trump revoked its order.¹ The firm also agreed to political neutrality in client selection and attorney hiring, merit-based hiring, promotion and retention, and pro bono work across the political spectrum, Howell recounted.¹ She cited the deal as evidence of the orders' coercive power.¹

AliKhan listed eight other firms that negotiated agreements to avoid similar orders, pledging hundreds of millions of dollars in free legal work on initiatives Trump supported.⁴

Trump described these deals in an April 8, 2025 speech that Howell reproduced.¹

Memorandum Opinion, Perkins Coie LLP v. U.S. Department of Justice, p. 61¹

And I agree, they’ve done nothing wrong. But what the hell, they’ve given me a lot of money considering they’ve done nothing wrong.

Mark Zaid Lost Access to Classified Cases

Mark Zaid had represented the intelligence-community whistleblower whose complaint led to Trump's first impeachment.⁷ Trump showed his photo at a 2019 rally and called him a "sleazeball", Judge Amir Ali later recounted.⁷ In February 2025, Zaid sued for FBI employees seeking protection from retaliation for investigating January 6.⁷ The next month, the Director of National Intelligence announced that she had revoked his clearance, and on March 22, 2025 Trump directed agencies to revoke active clearances and classified access for fifteen named people, including Zaid.⁷⁸ Trump's stated ground was that their access was no longer in the national interest; his memorandum identified no specific misconduct by Zaid.⁸

On December 23, 2025, Ali ruled on the reason.⁷

Memorandum Opinion and Order, Zaid v. Executive Office of the President⁷

Based on the preliminary injunction record, the court finds that Zaid’s representation of whistleblowers and other clients adverse to the government was the sole reason for summarily revoking his security clearance.

Ali credited evidence that the revocation prevented Zaid from using classified information needed for pending cases and from attending classified portions of a client's interview with a legislative committee.⁷ He found that clients had been deprived of their chosen counsel without a compelling reason.⁷ Punishing the lawyer also disabled the representation people had hired him to provide.

Ali granted a preliminary injunction, effective January 13, 2026, against giving effect to Zaid's clearance revocations and denials of classified access under Trump's memorandum, while leaving agencies free to suspend or revoke his clearance for independent reasons through ordinary lawful procedures.⁷ The government appealed, and the D.C. Circuit heard Zaid's case alongside the firm cases on May 14, 2026, Roll Call reported.⁹¹⁰

Covington's Lawyers Were Singled Out for Their Client

On February 25, 2025, Trump directed the Attorney General and agency heads to suspend the clearances of Peter Koski and other Covington & Burling lawyers who had assisted former special counsel Jack Smith, pending review of their roles in what Trump called the weaponization of the judicial process.¹¹ He also directed agencies to review federal contracts with the firm and take steps to terminate them to the extent allowed by law.¹¹ Smith had investigated allegations that Trump interfered with the transfer of power after the 2020 election and retained classified information after leaving office. Trump's memorandum singled out Covington lawyers for assisting him.¹¹¹

The Defense, and the Limits the Courts Enforced

The administration's strongest defense is real presidential authority over secrets, contracts, civil-rights enforcement and executive employees.⁵⁶¹² In its March 6, 2026 appeal brief, DOJ argued that clearance decisions were beyond judicial review, that the contract and building-access directives were unimplemented and not ripe for challenge, and that investigating discrimination and expressing the President's views were lawful executive functions.¹² In Department of the Navy v. Egan (1988), the Supreme Court held that the Merit Systems Protection Board lacked statutory authority to review the substance of an agency's security-clearance decision, and recognized the Executive's expertise and discretion over access to classified information.¹³ The government also relied on the D.C. Circuit's 2024 decision in Lee v. Garland, which barred statutory and constitutional challenges to the merits of an individual clearance revocation. Leon distinguished that rule from the blanket suspension process challenged here.³

The district judges rejected the claim that this discretion insulated Trump's blanket sanctions: Leon distinguished individualized security judgments from a policy suspending every clearance at a firm, and Ali held that Zaid challenged the denial of any individualized assessment rather than the merits of a security assessment.³⁷ Howell found that the government had no employer or contractor relationship with Perkins Coie; AliKhan likewise found that Susman was not a government contractor, although it represented clients with government business.¹⁴

The government won limited points. Bates held that Section 1 of the Jenner order, stripped of enforcement, was government speech.² He blocked all action under Sections 2 through 5 but declined to bar hypothetical future uses of Section 1 because Jenner lacked standing.² Leon dismissed WilmerHale's equal-protection, Fifth Amendment right-to-counsel and Spending Clause claims. On the Fifth Amendment claim, the firm had not shown that its clients could not obtain other qualified counsel. He nevertheless upheld its Sixth Amendment and other claims and permanently blocked the order.³

The orders stated national-security and anti-discrimination goals, but the judges rejected the government's security and discrimination justifications for the retaliation.⁵⁶¹⁴⁷ Howell found no evidence of unlawful discrimination by Perkins Coie; AliKhan found no evidence supporting the cited security risks from Susman's staff; Ali rejected the security explanation for Zaid's revocation on the preliminary record.¹⁴⁷ The cases showed lost client work and concessions on hiring, clients and free legal services.¹³⁴

In July 2025, DOJ instructed agencies to comply with the Susman Godfrey injunction and filed a status report certifying compliance.¹⁴¹⁵ In March 2026 it briefly moved to drop the firm appeals, withdrew that motion the next day, and on May 14 argued to restore the orders.¹⁶¹⁷¹⁰

At that argument, DOJ lawyer Abhishek Kambli said courts could not review clearance decisions if the President invoked national security, Reuters reported: "Even if it is for improper motives, it is ultimately unreviewable".¹⁸ Reuters described the argument as appearing to gain support from Trump-appointed Judge Neomi Rao, whose questions focused on the limits of judicial review.¹⁸ Kambli maintained his position when judges posed examples involving a person's race or a firm's representation of Catholics, African Americans or Asian Americans, Roll Call reported.¹⁰

Why This Is a Case Against Trump

Kambli pointed to impeachment or legislation as ways Congress could restrain misuse of the power, Roll Call reported.¹⁰ Article II, Section 4 provides for impeachment and removal for treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, and Hamilton described impeachable misconduct as abuse or violation of public trust.¹⁹²⁰ Trump v. United States (2024) bars judicial inquiry into presidential motives when deciding criminal immunity for official acts; Congress has a separate constitutional judgment to make.²¹

In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted 28 to 10 for an abuse-of-power article charging Richard Nixon with misuse of federal agencies in violation or disregard of citizens' constitutional rights.²² Nixon resigned before the full House voted.²³

On May 13, 2026, DOJ also sued to shield former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark from attorney discipline, presenting the suit as carrying out Trump's directives, a separate effort detailed in [the Clark article](bar_split_clark.md).²⁴²⁵

Trump issued the firm orders and the Zaid and Covington directives himself; the responsibility is his.^5634811 Four judges found unconstitutional retaliation, and a fifth found on a preliminary record that Zaid's clients were the sole reason his clearance was revoked.¹²³⁴⁷ Clients left their firms, people lost their chosen counsel in classified matters, and firms pledged hundreds of millions in free legal work.¹³⁷⁴ Using the presidency to punish legal representation is an abuse of public trust. The courts' intervention limited it; it did not make it harmless.