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Many Americans may not have taken notice, but yesterday marked yet another turning point for this Trump administration: A major U.S. law firm waved the white flag to our authoritarian president.
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, based in New York, has a lengthy list of powerful clients and a long-standing commitment to causes of public interest. On March 14, it was singled out by Trump when he issued an executive order accusing the law firm of “undermining the judicial process” and participating “in the destruction of bedrock American principles.”
He did so because the firm’s definition of the public interest leaned in a liberal direction, and because it employs Mark Pomerantz, who worked with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in the New York hush money trial, for which the president was convicted of committing 34 felonies.
The president channeled his grievances against Paul Weiss and other so-called global law firms by alleging that they “have engaged in activities that make our communities less safe, increase burdens on local businesses, limit constitutional freedoms, and degrade the quality of American elections.” The order also claims: “They have sometimes done so on behalf of clients, pro bono, or ostensibly ‘for the public good’—potentially depriving those who cannot otherwise afford the benefit of top legal talent the access to justice deserved by all.”
In an unprecedented move, the order also singled out Pomerantz, calling him “unethical” and pointing out, in unusually personal terms, that he “left Paul Weiss to join the Manhattan District Attorney’s office solely to manufacture a prosecution against me.”
Among other things, the president directed his subordinates “to suspend any active security clearances held by individuals at Paul Weiss and Mark Pomerantz” and “take appropriate steps to terminate any contract … for which Paul Weiss has been hired to perform any service.”
The choice the firm faced reminded me of a classic 1950s television commercial. It shows a woman slowly turning to the camera, revealing a black eye and professing her loyalty to her brand of cigarettes by saying, “Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch.”
In Paul Weiss’ case, though, it took just six days for it to switch rather than fight, abandoning its principles and those of the legal profession. This is a surprising development, given the firm’s history.
As the New York Times explains, “The firm has long prided itself on breaking barriers and standing up to the government on issues like civil rights. Its website trumpets how it was the first major New York City firm to have Jewish lawyers working alongside Gentiles, to hire a Black associate and to have a female partner.” Moreover, the legal profession has long been considered an advocate of what former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once called “the attainment of liberty through law.”
Apparently, Paul Weiss did not get that message. What the firm did yesterday is a reminder of the Vietnam-era adage that justified American wartime abuses: “We have to burn this village to save it.”
Brad Karp, the head of the firm, went, hat in hand, to the Oval Office and lit a match to the firm’s reputation. To get the president to back off his threats to the firm, Karp agreed “to a series of commitments, including to represent clients no matter their political affiliation and contribute $40 million in legal services to causes Mr. Trump has championed, including ‘the President’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and other mutually agreed projects.’ ”
Would any self-respecting lawyer and law firm let anyone, including the president of the United States, tell them whom they should represent or give into the kind of blackmail that has become a regular practice since Trump returned to office? I would have assumed that Karp and Paul Weiss would have rejected such overtures.
There is some dispute over the exact terms of the agreement; HuffPost reported discrepancies between the version of the document the White House posted and what Karp sent to his firm. For example, the White House version asserts that the firm had agreed Pomerantz was indeed guilty of “wrongdoing,” though the particular kind of wrongdoing was left unspecified. The only wrong that Pomerantz did was to do his job in a way that offended the president, and Karp’s note failed to mention him.
But the damage has already been done. That is why, even as it described the differences in the versions of events offered by Karp and the White House, HuffPost still referred to what it called a “shocking agreement” between them.
In light of that agreement, one can only imagine the hallway conversations between lawyers at Paul Weiss right now. The firm’s capitulation is a blow to the forces seeking to resist the destruction of America’s constitutional order. When the history of this era is written, the proverb that fish “rot from the head” may have particular purchase in explaining the significance of Paul Weiss’ actions. The firm’s surrender also signifies another kind of rot, namely what Yale Law professor Jack Balkin calls “constitutional rot,” which he defines as “a degradation of constitutional norms that may operate over a long period of time.”
When constitutional rot becomes advanced, Balkin notes, “people turn to demagogues, … who stoke division, anger and resentment. Demagogues promise that they will restore lost glories and make everything right again.” These demagogues proceed by cowing their opponents and encouraging everyone, especially the most powerful loci of resistance, to fall in line. And falling in line is exactly what Paul Weiss did.
Going after large law firms is the Trump administration’s way of showing that no one is safe. Making one of them say uncle and going public about it demonstrates that proposition.
Standing up to bullies is the best way to deal with the administration. By backing down, Paul Weiss feeds the beast and encourages more of the kind of bullying that the White House has used against it.
The first domino has fallen. Sadly, others will soon follow.
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