Libs previously silent on Dem lawfare decry Trump terminating 'dishonest' law firms' security clearances

Liberals previously silent about the lawfare waged against President Donald Trump by the Biden administration, and apparently unbothered by Democratic operatives' years-long campaign to professionally crush attorneys who supported Trump, are now clutching pearls over the Republican president's termination of special privileges for a pair of adversarial law firms.

Last month, Trump signed a memorandum to suspend security clearances for members of the law firm Covington & Burling who helped Jack Smith, the former special counsel whose unsuccessful prosecutions against Trump the president has since characterized as "part of the prior administration's unprecedented weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process."

Trump noted in the order that "individuals who hold government-issued security clearances bear a responsibility to uphold impartiality and the national interest," then insinuated that the firm's provision of $140,000 in free legal services to Smith was demonstrative of an extra-professional and partisan interest in the special counsel's political mission.

Days later, Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and other relevant agency heads to suspend any active security clearances held by individuals at the Democratic-aligned firm Perkins Coie and ordered the Office of Management and Budget to identify federal properties and assets made available to Perkins Coie so that agency heads can "expeditiously cease such provision."

In his March 6 order, Trump also set the stage for the termination of any governmental contracts with Perkins Coie, citing the need to spare taxpayers from subsidizing "racial discrimination, falsified documents designed to weaponize the Government against candidates for office, and anti-democratic election changes that invite fraud and distrust."

The two firms' deprivation of special privileges prompted fellow travelers to cry foul.

'This is just jaw-dropping.'

The Seattle chapter of the leftist National Lawyers Guild, once called the "foremost legal bulwark of the Communist Party," denounced Trump's revocation of Perkins Coie's security clearances, stating that the decision "exemplifies his complete disregard for the rule of law and his contempt for core American democratic values."

The American College of Trial Lawyers claimed in a statement that Trump's orders "threaten lawyers and law firms merely for advocating for positions that the administration disfavors," adding that "lawyers throughout the country should unite in condemning these actions in the strongest possible terms."

Neither the NLG nor the ACTL appear to have similarly condemned the Democratic-aligned 65 Project's apparent attempts to deprive political opponents of effective legal representation and to disbar attorneys who threatened Democratic control with election-fraud lawsuits.

Numerous liberal scholars have jumped on the concern-monger bandwagon, characterizing the big firms' loss of special privileges as potentially unconstitutional.

"This is just jaw-dropping," Laurence Tribe, a constitutional scholar at Harvard Law School and vociferous Trump critic, told Vox. "This represents sort of a great escalation of a trend that was already evident."

'They were very dishonest people.'

Some liberal critics suggested that the perceived suspension of security clearances on the basis of which clients the firms represented might constitute viewpoint discrimination.

Tribe suggested Perkins Coie's loss of security clearances might also violate the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel, which is "gravely endangered if the executive branch can brand and ostracize a particular group of lawyers and strip them of the security clearances, without which they could not represent a number of the people that the administration either has gone after or has indicated an intention to go after."

Ellen Podgor, a Stetson University law professor, suggested to CNN that by taking away the adversarial firm's access to classified information and federal buildings, "you're taking away the ability of an attorney to act in their role as a lawyer."

Legal experts made clear to Reuters that the Trump administration is within its rights to grant and rescind security clearances and federal contracts.

University of Colorado Law School professor Maryam Jamshidi suggested that challenging the termination of security clearances, which Perkins Coie has said it will do, would be legally difficult.

Trump appears eager to review and possibly tear up additional firms' security clearances and federal contracts.

"We have a lot of law firms that we're going to be going after because they were very dishonest people," Trump told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo Sunday. "They were very, very dishonest. I could go point after point after point. And it was so bad for our country. And we have a lot of law firms we're going after."

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