The worst attorney general in America strikes again

Posted on November 15, 2025 by Lisa Needham

Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.

Welcome to another week of the justice system being, well, not great! At least this week, we can mix things up a bit.

Of course, there’s no way a week could go by without more news about interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan. But we’ve also got a couple trips to state courts this time around, with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton continuing to be racist and awful, and Washington state dropping some really dystopian surveillance-state stuff on us all.

Your weekly Lindsey Halligan update: Not great for Lindsey

Lindsey Halligan—everyone’s favorite insurance lawyer turned defense attorney for President Donald Trump turned Smithsonian Institution anti-woke scold turned interim United States attorney turned surprise texting pal—is extremely busy fending off so, so many motions. That’s the fallout when you agree to be the vessel for Trump’s retribution efforts. But what if Halligan had even more to worry about?

Enter the request from watchdog group Campaign for Accountability that both the Florida and Virginia state bars investigate Halligan for, well, everything.

Fam, is it good when the bar complaint about your behavior runs 17 pages? And has, like, multiple subheadings? We’ve got the so-called investigations of both former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. We’ve got the Comey and James grand jury proceedings and indictments. Do we have the unsolicited texts to Lawfare’s Anna Bower? Hell yeah we do.

Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, shown in August.

The complaint alleges that Halligan likely violated an ethics rule about making false statements of fact or law to a tribunal, given that it looks like she just might have had a wee bit of trouble telling the truth to the grand juries in both her big cases. That weird unsolicited text exchange with Bower? Well, that one might violate the rule against lawyers making extrajudicial statements that could interfere with the fairness of a jury trial.

There’s an ethics rule specific to prosecutors that bars them from filing a case if they know it lacks probable cause. To be fair, it might not be that Halligan willingly violated that rule. After all, it could be that she has no idea what probable cause actually requires.

That brings us to the allegation that’s got to sting the most here: that Halligan may have violated the rule requiring a lawyer to provide competent representation and to have "the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.”

Man, it has to feel rough when a bar complaint about you runs down your paper-thin resume as evidence that you are so out of your depth that perhaps a state bar should sanction you.

Ken Paxton continues to be the worst

When Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is not abusing the power of his office by suing the makers of Tylenol, he is abusing the power of his office by trying to shut down a nonprofit that works to increase civic participation and voting by Latinos.

And now the group is fighting back. Jolt Initiative sued Paxton to try to stop him from revoking their nonprofit charter.

Paxton’s efforts are a transparent effort to suppress the Latino vote by deliberately conflating voter registration drives with illegally registering noncitizens to vote. Now, Paxton’s filing against Jolt didn’t actually allege that they registered noncitizens to vote. No, it’s that holding voter registration drives near DMV locations “illuminates its unlawful motive.”

Huh? Well, since citizens can register to vote at the DMV, having voter drives near the DMV, of course, means you are trying to register noncitizens. No, really, that’s Paxton’s argument.

Paxton’s stretching here because let’s face it, the only way he and his pals will continue to hold power in Texas is by suppressing the vote.

President Donald Trump, shown on Nov. 9.

Only the best people

In 2020, during his first term, Trump tapped Joshua Kindred for a lifetime seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska. Kindred’s lifetime seat turned out to be pretty short, though, as he quit after an investigation alleged that he had an “inappropriately sexualized relationship” with a law clerk, created a hostile work environment for clerks that featured abusive sexual conduct and sexual harassment, sent vulgar texts about his sex life, and then lied about everything to the chief judge.

Last year, the U.S. Judicial Conference even referred Kindred to Congress for potential impeachment—even though he resigned—saying his behavior was so reprehensible that Congress should review it.

And now, not only does Kindred not have his judge job, but also he is also no longer allowed to practice law in Alaska. The state Supreme Court disbarred him, dropping a 67-page decision detailing his malfeasance. Really a top-notch judicial pick you got there, Trump.

The 8th Circuit gets somehow even suckier

In its quest to become a rubber stamp for conservatives, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit overturned a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that had found that Home Depot unlawfully terminated someone for having “BLM”—as in “Black Lives Matter”—on their work apron. Home Depot allowed people to personalize their aprons but allegedly told the employee, a person of color, they had to remove it since the company’s policy said that work aprons were not an appropriate place for religious beliefs, causes, or political messages. Home Depot also helpfully explained that if they had to let someone have “BLM” on a work apron, they would also have to allow swastikas.

Okaaaaaay.

In overturning the NLRB’s ruling, the 8th Circuit panel managed to completely eclipse the racism of Home Depot with some breathtaking racism of their own. You see, there were special circumstances here, according to the panel. This Home Depot store is in New Brighton, Minnesota, and the court determined that the “conditions” facing the store “gave rise to legitimate safety concerns.”

What concerns? Well, you see, George Floyd’s murder. No, really:

The activity in dispute was not a display at a random location in the United States; it was not at a normal moment in time; and it was not a generic message for equal rights or employee protection. [The employee’s] BLM message was broadcast only a few miles from the site of George Floyd's murder.

“A few miles” is doing a lot of work here. New Brighton is a suburb of Minneapolis that abuts the opposite end of the city from where Floyd was murdered. It’s several miles away … by freeway.

This must have been during the unrest, then, right?

Nope. The judges decided that an employee wearing “BLM” on their uniform in February 2021—months after Floyd’s murder and the subsequent protests—was “a clear risk to customer and employee safety,” and that the slogan reasonably threatened the security of the workplace.

Just come out and say that you are going to let companies be racist. It would save us all a bunch of time.

Flock data is a public record, and that is not great!

A few months ago, you might have heard about Texas deputies reportedly using Flock Safety, an automated license-plate reader, to track down someone who had allegedly had a self-managed abortion as part of a “death investigation” and possible prosecution.

Sure, the deputies said they were just trying to find her to check on her welfare, and that’s why they reportedly conducted a nationwide search of over 83,000 Flock cameras and reviewed her text messages about the abortion.

So, what could be worse than cops tapping into a giant network of surveillance cameras whenever they feel like it? Glad you asked.

How about if, at least in Washington state, everything from those Flock cameras are public records and therefore can be requested by anyone? Why should law enforcement have all the fun of using a dystopian surveillance tool to track people? Better to just throw open the doors to every bad actor!

And speaking of bad actors. Eight Washington state law enforcement agencies had already shared access to their Flock networks directly with U.S. Border Patrol.

So, a private company built a vast network of surveillance cameras. Which police have access to. And maybe in some places, anyone does. And maybe in other places, Border Patrol does as well. This surveillance state sucks.

The justice system’s falling apart—but the worst people are losing

Posted on November 8, 2025 by Lisa Needham

Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.

Welcome to another week where we try to make sense of the justice system in an era where it is basically self-destructing. This week, though, we can report that it was a bad week for some of the worst people you know.

Do you loathe U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan? You’re in luck, because she is getting dressed down by the judge in her ridiculous prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey.

Hate Gregory Bovino, the cosplay-Nazi brute leading the administration’s violent occupation of Chicago? He did not have a good time in court this week.

Think House Speaker Mike Johnson is laughably pathetic? Watch him suck up as hard as possible by slamming the Supreme Court and trying to hand over even more of Congress’ power to Trump.

Are we really doing this again?

House Republicans just can’t stop threatening to impeach, well, lots of judges, but they have a particular hatred of Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge for the District of Columbia.

So, what is it this time? This one is a bit tough to follow, because it requires you to be fully steeped in the Deep Lore of Jan. 6. Somehow, Boasberg should be impeached because he authorized former special counsel Jack Smith to issue nondisclosure orders so that the legislators Smith was seeking phone logs from were not notified of the request.

Texas Rep. Brandon Gill has a bone to pick with Judge James Boasberg for doing his job.

That is apparently, at least according to Texas Rep. Brandon Gill, who is very much not a lawyer, illegal and threatening, and come on, this stuff is exhausting. Oh, also, Boasberg has weaponized the judiciary on behalf of former President Joe Biden, which would be a super-odd thing to do given that Biden is no longer president and presumably isn’t trying to puppet-master the judiciary.

What this clutch of House members is actually most mad about is that Judge Boasberg had the gall to tell the administration it had to turn around the planes of detainees they were deporting under cover of darkness. Of course, the administration just defied that order anyway.

This will probably be as successful and fact-free as the misconduct charge the administration tried to slap Boasberg with. This seems to have languished for a while, but what Attorney General Pam Bondi alleges is the mostest worstest thing a judge could do was to mention, in a private gathering of judges, that he was worried that the Trump administration would disregard court orders and trigger a constitutional crisis.

Right on both counts, Boasberg!

This most recent treat time at the Supreme Court really sucks

Is it really treat time when it is a constant stream of treats? It’s no longer special or surprising that the Supreme Court’s six conservatives are absolutely in the tank for President Donald Trump.

Want to illegally remove members of independent boards even though the law prohibits it? Have at it!

Want to racially profile people so ICE can more easily detain them, even though the Fourth Amendment prohibits it? Sure! You do you, boo!

But this latest one is super bleak, with the Supreme Court clearing the way for the administration to kick transgender and nonbinary people in the teeth some more by blocking them from having a passport that reflects their gender identity. This is, of course, not a ruling in a case that has been fully litigated. This is just the usual Supreme Court thing, where whenever a lower court says Trump can’t do something, he runs to the Supreme Court so they will block the lower court’s ruling.

So, it’s literally an emergency if Trump is not allowed to misgender and torment trans people right now, even as the case proceeds through the courts. This is a court that welcomes Trump’s project to hurt trans people just because he can, and they’re gosh darn happy to get to help out.

No treat time for Halligan in the Eastern District of Virginia

Things continue to go swimmingly for everyone’s favorite real estate lawyer turned Smithsonian anti-woke director turned Interim U.S. Attorney—maybe?—Lindsey Halligan.

Halligan was likely flying high when she succeeded at carrying out Trump’s demands to indict Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. However, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to Halligan that there were about a zillion other steps in front of her in terms of actually convicting Comey or James.

U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan

Fam, is it bad when the judge in your case says you seem to have an attitude of “indict first” and investigate second? That seems bad, right?

The DOJ had been ordered to turn over grand jury materials in the Comey case for the judge to review and determine whether to release them to Comey. One of Comey’s motions is to unseal the grand jury testimony, given that it seemed like Halligan was just doing Trump’s bidding with the indictment, the inaccuracies in the actual indictment, and that every career prosecutor said they wouldn’t touch this with a ten-foot pole.

So, even though they were ordered to provide everything, the DOJ seemed to have left out remarks from Halligan herself, who is the sole person who presented the case to the grand jury. The judge issued what could only be called a “Did I Stutter?” order and gave Halligan 24 hours to produce the remainder. Have fun, Lindsey!

No treat time for Bovino in Chicago

Is there a better example of the absolute depravity and Nazi cosplay of ICE than Bovino? Just an absolutely irredeemable dude, perfect for Trump’s war on immigrants and blue cities.

Gregory Bovino loves to defy court orders when it comes to terrifying immigrants.

Like Trump, Bovino thinks court orders are optional, so he and his band of cretins just kept terrorizing Chicago even after the judge issued a temporary restraining order stopping them from tear-gassing children without warning and using less-lethal munitions just because he feels like it. Bovino didn’t just ignore that order, he flagrantly, gleefully violated it. So on Thursday, Judge Sara Ellis upgraded her temporary restraining order to a preliminary injunction, which is also a “Did I Stutter?” order.

Of course, the administration is already whining about how their stormtroopers in Chicago are facing serious threats but showing “incredible restraint” and they’re gonna appeal, of course.

And if you’re wondering how long it took Bovino and his thugs to violate the injunction? Pretty much immediately, with agents firing pepper balls at a car that pulled up next to them, because how dare Chicagoans drive near this band of trigger-happy Nazis. Surely that’s a shootable offense, right?

Looks like Johnson does actually know something?

Aww, poor Speaker Johnson. The only good thing about watching him relentlessly lie every day is that you can tell it is eating away at him. Not because it bothers him, but because he sucks at lying. He’s too much of a wuss to bluster, too overconfident to actually prepare, and catastrophically bad at speaking off the cuff.

This week, Johnson had the weight of the world on his slumping little shoulders. He had to spin the GOP’s catastrophic losses in Tuesday’s elections. He has to pretend there is a secret plan to fix health care.

But at least that’s novel. Most days he just declares that he doesn’t know anything about anything … well, anything bad that Trump is doing.

But apparently he paid attention to Wednesday’s Supreme Court arguments on tariffs, and he is very disappointed in Justice Neil Gorsuch. Johnson is unhappy that Gorsuch expressed concern that Trump’s tariff scheme is a power grab from Congress. Yes, that’s the head of one of the bodies of Congress whining that the judicial branch isn’t signing on to let Trump take Congress’ power away. Jesus, man. Have some dignity.

Musk’s big mouth, and the DOJ’s unlawful meme obsession

Posted on October 11, 2025 by Lisa Needham

Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.

Last week was … a lot, legally speaking. While much of the Trump administration’s efforts have shifted to trying to get courts to agree that President Donald Trump can deploy troops from red states to bring blue cities to heel, there are still many other terrible developments.

We’ve got a throwback to Elon Musk’s idiotic actions, the Fifth Circuit is likely going to decide it’s totally groovy to force religion into the classroom, James Comey’s attorney is taking a page from Trump’s playbook, and the Supreme Court looks primed to strike down conversion therapy bans—because why not hurt trans kids more. Oh and last—but never least—is the Department of Justice’s meme antics undermining its own case against Luigi Mangione.

Musk and the Trump administration FAFO

Well, well, well. If it isn’t the consequences of Musk’s own actions.

The New York Times recently prevailed in its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit over the Trump administration’s refusal to provide a list of Musk’s security clearances when he was a government contractor prior to 2025. Now the administration will have to cough it up.

Elon Musk stands beside President Donald Trump.

They tried to say that it would violate Musk’s privacy, but the court noted that Musk bragged publicly of his “top secret clearance” in 2024, making it not really all that private to begin with.

The Times did not request additional information—like Musk’s application for clearances or any investigative materials—but the government still claimed that it couldn’t provide the form because it would show whether clearances were subject to any conditions, even if the conditions themselves were redacted.

This is where Musk’s boasts about his ketamine use, his cringe-worthy blunt rotation with Joe Rogan, and his chats with Vladimir Putin came back to bite him.

To grant a security clearance, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency must review foreign influences and drug use. The court said that, while Musk has not publicly discussed any conditions, he has publicly addressed his drug use and contacts with foreign leaders. And since the DCSA is supposed to consider those things, the public has an interest in the DCSA’s performance of its duties.

You can expect the Trump administration to continue fighting this because it would likely crack open the door for FOIA requests about Musk’s clearances at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency—and they desperately don’t want that.

The Fifth Circuit will keep hearing Ten Commandment cases until they get the desired result

In another horrible development, the Fifth Circuit has ordered a full court review of the three-judge panel decision in Roake v. Brumley—and it’s not an exaggeration to say that we should all be worried.

Both the Louisiana lower court and the three-judge panel ruled that the law requiring public schools to permanently display the Ten Commandments was unconstitutional, because it so obviously is.

The fact that they agreed to a review and requested new briefs and oral arguments is a sign that there’s an appetite to reverse it. This would mean getting a decision on the books holding that the government can force the display of the Ten Commandments—but only the Protestant version chosen by the state.

Next stop will be the Supreme Court because, much like they did with abortion, states are going to keep passing objectively unconstitutional laws, shoving them up to the Supreme Court to bless them. Terrific system we have here.

Unlawful appointments giveth, but they may also taketh away

One of the challenges James Comey’s attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, has said he will raise—and file a motion to dismiss the case—is an unlawful appointment claim.

Basically, that would be that Lindsey Halligan, installed as interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia for the sole purpose of indicting Trump’s enemies, is not legally allowed to be in her role. Her predecessor, Erik Siebert, served the limit of 120 days in the interim position, allowing the federal judges to appoint him.

The issue is whether that created a new vacancy or not. If it did not, then that 120-day interim use is gone forever, which is why the court ruled that Alina Habba isn’t legally in her role in New Jersey. In that case, the Trump administration argued that the 120-day clock starts over with each interim appointment, but that would make the 120-day interim limit entirely useless.

There would be a sort of grimly hilarious symmetry if the Comey prosecution falls apart because a judge decides that Halligan was not properly in her role. Trump hit a stroke of luck when his all-time favorite lower-court judge Aileen Cannon ruled, wildly incorrectly, that Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed and threw out the entire classified documents case.

What’s good for the goose, etc.

SCOTUS tips its hand, and it’s not great

Tuesday’s oral argument in Chiles v. Salazar made it clear that the Supreme Court is going to strike down Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors. Doing so would also knock out similar laws throughout almost half of the country.

There’s no credible argument for conversion therapy, which tries to force minors to be heterosexual and cisgender. Major health care organizations have denounced it, and people forced to undergo it report high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

The right-wing argument in Chiles is that it violates the free speech of therapists if they can’t compel children to listen to how their identity is bad and wrong.

It’s an absolute sham of a lawsuit, with no evidence that the plaintiff ever intended to offer conversion therapy or received any complaints. Her lawyer, with the rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ group Alliance Defending Freedom, told the court that Chiles was the subject of “anonymous complaints” that they declined to provide.

This is just another case where the plaintiff is nothing but a straw man standing in to get the desired conservative result—which is to protect the free speech of bigots at the expense of the wellbeing of LGBTQ+ kids.

Trump and the DOJ are going to tweet Luigi Mangione right out of jail

The DOJ is in trouble over how hyped it is to talk about Mangione’s guilt while in the midst of prosecuting him, with the public affairs deputy director posting on X interviews of Trump saying that Mangione “shot someone in the back as clear as you’re looking at me.”

Luigi Mangione is seen in a courtroom wearing a bulletproof vest.

This is pretty much a textbook example of prejudicial pretrial statements, which are not allowed, as pretty much every DOJ prosecutor knows. But the DOJ is being steered by people whose main interests are creating cool meme content and hurting people, so they might not be so familiar.

When the court ordered the Trump administration to explain what happened here, they said that, since the person who made the post wasn’t part of the prosecution team, they weren’t violating the rule.

This is nonsense, of course, as it would basically mean that the DOJ could pop off with these statements any time as long as the actual prosecutor on the case isn’t the one to say it.

But this isn’t the first time that the attention-hungry, meme-driven administration ran into trouble with Mangione, who’s now moving to block the DOJ from seeking the death penalty because of the highly televised perp walk they made him do.

Clarence Thomas is big mad, and big law pays off the president

Posted on March 29, 2025 by Lisa Needham

Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.

Would you like some good news, even if it is only a temporary dopamine hit? Of course you would. Let yourself experience the sheer joy of seeing the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals treat the Trump administration’s legal arguments with precisely what they deserve—scorn.

On Wednesday, the appellate court issued a decision denying the administration’s request to overturn Judge James Boasberg’s order that blocked the Trump team from deporting migrants without due process.

The ban is a mere two weeks long, briefly halting the practice of piling migrants into planes and sending them to a brutal mega-prison in El Salvador, where Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did a cutesy media hit earlier this week. Donald Trump has justified this by invoking the Alien Enemies Act, previously used only in times of war.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem films her social media content in a brutal Salvadoran prison.

The administration found the idea of a two-week delay so outrageous, it made an emergency appeal to the D.C. Circuit, saying Boasberg infringed on the executive branch’s power regarding national security.

Things started going badly for the administration during oral argument when Judge Patricia Millett said that “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act.”

Ouch.

Judge Karen Henderson, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote an opinion concurring with the decision to uphold the stay, rejecting the administration’s ridiculous argument that courts aren’t even allowed to review the government’s conduct because national security blah blah blah.

She also took the administration to task for using a random dictionary definition of “invasion” as its only support for the argument that we are somehow under attack by Venezuelan gangs, and therefore migrants can be deported.

Millett’s concurring opinion pointed out the absurdity of the administration saying it doesn’t have to comply with the temporary restraining order while simultaneously challenging the order.

“The one thing that is not tolerable,” Millett wrote, “is for the government to seek from this court a stay of an order that the government at the very same time is telling the district court is not an order with which compliance was ever required.”

The administration may take this to the Supreme Court, where Trump can see if the conservative majority will do him a solid, like they so often do, and let him keep deporting anyone he wants based on, well, nothing except the dictionary.

The judiciary rouses itself from slumber

The judicial branch finally seems to have realized that it is suboptimal for judges to be threatened with impeachment and defunding just because the president doesn’t like their rulings. There’s also the tiny problem of death threats.

It no doubt stings that the Trump administration has lost lower court battles over its unprecedented funding freeze, its mass firing of government workers, and its horrific deportations. No other administration, though, has reacted to losses in court by deciding to just rid the world of these meddlesome judges.

The judiciary has set up a task force about security and the independence of the courts. Federal judges and court clerks will make up the task force, which will help the judiciary “respond to current risks, and to anticipate new ones.”

There should be no risk to judges for ruling against Trump, and it’s appalling that it’s reached the point where a task force is needed. But here we are, and it’s good the judiciary eventually noticed.

Clarence Thomas is incandescent with rage that we can’t all have ghost guns like the founders intended

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court upheld an incredibly mild Biden-era rule about ghost guns. Ghost guns are sold as parts, not complete weapons, to be assembled by the buyer or another private party. They’re untraceable, have no serial numbers, and you don’t need a license to buy them.

A ghost gun that police seized from an organized shoplifting crime ring.

Regrettably, the regulation doesn’t ban ghost guns. All it requires is that ghost guns are treated like other firearms, requiring sellers to add serial numbers, verify buyers are at least 21, and perform background checks.

You will not be surprised to learn that Justice Clarence Thomas finds this an outrageous limitation on freedom. His dissent predictably whines about “government overreach” and contains what feels like eleventy-thousand words debating the meaning of words in the rule.

What he’s really mad about, though, is a worry that the ghost gun rule could be applied somehow to block home modification of AR-15s. God forbid.

Have you considered that the people who really need reparations in America are the Jan. 6 rioters?

When Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., isn’t protecting a GOP House member from domestic violence charges, investigating nonexistent voter fraud, or threatening law schools, he’s very busy calling for reparations for the Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the Capitol.

Martin fixated on this well before Trump tapped him as the top prosecutor in D.C. Back in January 2024, he mused that he had “finally come around” to reparations and that J6 insurrectionists should get “a big pot of money, like the asbestos money we got for asbestos victims.”

Yes, literal insurrectionists who received the benefit of full due process in the judicial system are precisely the same as people who got mesothelioma thanks to breathing cancer for decades. It’s also an odd comparison because asbestos victims are paid out from private compensation funds, not the government, though veterans who were exposed during their service can apply for disability compensation.

U.S. Capitol Police security video showed Tyler Bradley Dykes, marked in red, breaking into the Capitol. He had been sentenced to nearly five years in prison for assaulting police officers.

Now Trump has picked up the torch, saying he’s thinking about establishing a government compensation fund for the very criminals he pardoned. Trump is not, of course, down with reparations for the descendants of enslaved persons.

Guess we’ve finally found something the administration will spend money on. Too bad it’s this.

Two more law firms get their turn in the barrel for … reasons

It was only a week ago that the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP rolled over and showed their tummies to Trump to get him to rescind an executive order targeting the firm.

It was inevitable that capitulation would embolden Trump, who promptly issued new executive orders targeting additional firms he has beef with, Jenner & Block and WilmerHale. These executive orders generally suspend the security clearances of firm employees, block their access to federal buildings, and drastically restrict their ability to talk to government employees.

WilmerHale was targeted because Robert Mueller worked there before and after his role as special counsel investigating Russian interference in Trump’s first election. In the case of Jenner & Block, attorney Andrew Weissmann, former deputy to Mueller, previously worked there.

Never mind that Mueller retired from WilmerHale four years ago, and Weissmann hasn’t been at Jenner & Block since 2021 and is now a Substacker.

Both WilmerHale and Jenner & Block sued the administration on Friday. WilmerHale’s lawsuit points out that the executive order violates the separation of powers, the right to due process, and the right to counsel.

Jenner & Block’s complaint explains that the executive order threatens not only the firm, but the legal system itself and that the Constitution “forbids attempts by the government to punish citizens and lawyers” based on their choice of clients, their legal positions, and the people they associate with.”

Trump’s attack on law firms has had the desired effect, as firms are starting to refuse to represent his opponents.

On Thursday, The New York Times reported that mega-firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom had entered into talks with the Trump administration to stave off a similar executive order. By Friday afternoon, Skadden was reportedly agreeing to give $100 million in pro bono work to administration-approved causes, which Trump called “essentially a settlement.”

Now that’s some complying in advance.

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