“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
Those ominous words from Shakespeare’s Henry IV appeared at the start of the opinion of Senior District Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee. She was writing to bar Trump from carrying out his executive order penalizing law firm Perkins Coie for its conduct during the 2016 election.
Howell would have been wise to add the lines that appeared later in the same play: “Presume not that I am the thing I was.” The fact is that many of those objecting today to the targeting of Democratic firms and lawyers were the very same people who targeted conservative lawyers for years — or remained utterly silent as those attacks unfolded.
After Howell’s opinion, Perkins Coie issued a statement to NBC News that the ruling “affirms … the right to select counsel without the fear of retribution.” But that is a luxury that conservative lawyers have not known for years.
For the record, I opposed the executive orders of President Trump targeting law firms. But it will take more than a Shakespearean flourish to erase the hypocrisy of many lawyers, law schools, and bar groups in this controversy.
In prior years, Democratic groups unleashed a campaign to pressure firms to fire lawyers who represented Trump, the Republican Party, or conservative causes. That included boycotts and pressure campaigns targeting their clients. They were using the same tactic others used against figures like Elon Musk when he purchased Twitter and sought to dismantle its censorship system.
Their pressure campaigns worked. I personally know lawyers who were told to drop Republican cases or else find new employment — including partners who had to leave their longstanding firms.
Some of the letters signed recently by deans and law professors protesting Trump’s orders previously purged their schools of Republicans and conservatives. With only 9 percent of law professors identifying as conservative, most faculties have practically no Republicans or conservatives left.
These campaigns went beyond law firms. Trump Accountability Project, led by former Obama and Buttigieg staffers, made lists of Trump administration officials to hound them out of any employment opportunities.
These blacklists later morphed into a demand for the disbarment of dozens of lawyers and members of Congress.
It is true that these efforts are privately driven — much like the censorship campaigns on social media. But these campaigns often sought to target and harass lawyers and law firms to coerce them into not representing certain Republican clients or causes.
In 2021, I wrote about these campaigns, including one well-funded effort by the Lincoln Project calling upon its nearly 3 million followers to hound attorneys assisting the Trump team in legal battles. It named them and tweeted, “Make them famous,” with an emoji depicting a skull-and-crossbones.
The listed donors of the Lincoln Project are a who’s who of leading lawyers at some of the very firms now objecting to the effort to “intimidate” them today. One such lawyer is Randall Eliason, a past donor to the Lincoln Project who previously defended the campaign against other lawyers.
At the time, Eliason insisted that such campaigns are appropriate and even commendable. After all, he insisted, “these mega-law firms are also big businesses. Like any business, they can be held accountable by the public — and by their other customers.” Now, Eliason is appalled by Trump’s effort “to sanction law firms for doing nothing more than representing clients Trump doesn’t like.”
In fairness, the distinction between boycott campaigns and government actions is legally important. However, there remains a glaring inconsistency in the underlying principles in both governmental and non-governmental campaigns to hound and intimidate lawyers. Boycotts are an important form of public protest, but boycotting law firms and blacklisting lawyers due to their clients is both imprudent and dangerous … including when private parties do it.
Even a mere discussion of legal issues can trigger such cancel campaigns, as I discovered decades ago. What was striking was how lawyers joined such efforts to pressure my school to get me fired or silenced. Just last year, a Democratic donor and a senior partner at Dentons LLP, one of the largest firms in Washington, wrote to my dean to pledge his own boycott. Using his firm title and email, he told me (and the dean) that I had better “stop running your mouth” because my opposing views would not be tolerated. Even law professors have joined in such calls.
These “shut up or else” letters have an impact on deans, who are already not especially inclined to hire conservative or libertarian academics.
Lawyers at these same firms are now adopting a truly Shakespearean pose as heroic champions of free speech and free thought. For many conservatives and Republicans, it is about as convincing MacBeth claiming to be a pacifist.
The media have also joined in this hypocrisy. For example, 60 Minutes recently featured Marc Elias as a victim of a Trump order in a segment that portrayed Trump as akin to a “mob boss.”
Host Scott Pelley never informed the viewers of Elias’s checkered career history as the lawyer solemnly intoned that “Donald Trump is the walking embodiment of everything that is wrong with the American political system.”
That is precisely the accusation leveled by many against Elias, who has been denounced as a Democratic “dirty trickster” and even an “election denier.” He was the general counsel to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign when it funded the infamous Steele dossier and pushed the false Alfa Bank conspiracy. (His fellow Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, was indicted but acquitted in a criminal trial.)
Clinton campaign officials denied any involvement in the Steele Dossier, but it was discovered after the election that the Clinton campaign had hidden its payments for the dossier as “legal fees” paid to Perkins Coie.
New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said that Elias specifically denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman also wrote, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.” Elias was also present when John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, denied categorically to congressional investigators that there was any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS.
The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee were ultimately sanctioned by the FEC over the handling of the funding at Perkins Coie. The DNC later cut ties with Elias and, in 2021, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sanctioned him for misconduct. In Maryland, his legal group was found to be pushing a gerrymandered map that the court found would “subvert the will of those governed.”
Pelley and CBS did not consider any of that relevant for viewers to know about their purported victim.
Once again, this does not excuse the current targeting of law firms and lawyers. However, there could be a modicum of recognition of the years of systematically purging conservative lawyers and law professors by some of these very critics.
Trump, to quote King Lear, is saying, “The wheel is come full circle, I am here.” He would have done better to preserve the high ground. However, when it comes to some of his critics, this performance can come across as more of a comedy than a tragedy.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
