Law firm Perkins Coie has launched a suit to challenge President Trump’s stripping of security clearances for lawyers at the firm, saying it was targeted due to its past work for Democrats.
Perkins Coie, which represented Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016, was the subject of an executive order signed by Trump last week, citing the “dishonest and dangerous activity” of the firm.
Beyond stripping the firm’s clearances, the far-reaching order also essentially blocked its attorneys from federal buildings.
“The Order imposes these punishments as retaliation for the firm’s association with, and representation of, clients that the President perceives as his political opponents,” Perkins Coie wrote in the suit.
“The retaliatory aim of the Order is intentionally obvious to the general public and the press because the very goal is to chill future lawyers from representing particular clients.”
Perkins Coie is being represented by Williams and Connolly, a firm with significant experience in fighting the federal government.
During the 2016 campaign, Perkins Coie lawyers worked with Fusion GPS, which was connected to the Steele dossier. The dossier contained unflattering allegations about Trump and his connections to Russia.
Both Perkins Coie lawyers who worked on that case, Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann, left the law firm years ago.
Perkins Coie argues Trump acted outside the bounds of his executive authority in seeking to insert himself into matters that would otherwise be before the judicial branch. It also argues Trump violated its First Amendment free speech rights, as well as its Fifth Amendment rights to due process.
It also argued that by stripping its clearance and access to federal buildings, it was crippling the firm’s ability to represent clients suing the federal government.
“The Order is an affront to the Constitution and our adversarial system of justice. Its plain purpose is to bully those who advocate points of view that the President perceives as adverse to the views of his Administration….Perkins Coie brings this case reluctantly,” it said in the suit.
“The firm is comprised of lawyers who advocate for clients; its attorneys and employees are not activists or partisans. But Perkins Coie’s ability to represent the interests of its clients—and its ability to operate as a legal-services business at all—are under direct and imminent threat. Perkins Coie cannot allow its clients to be bullied.”
Trump has said he would strip the security clearances of a number of figures and has also done so for another firm, Covington and Burling, which provided pro bono legal services to former special counsel Jack Smith.
He also reportedly stripped the security clearance of Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer who represented whistleblowers at the center of Trump’s first impeachment.
Trump also previously signed an order stripping security clearances from 50 former national security officials who had signed onto a letter casting doubt onto the authenticity of a recovered laptop purported to belong to Hunter Biden. He also revoked clearances of several Biden administration officials, including former National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
In a post on X on Monday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said she had moved ahead with formalizing the revocation of numerous security clearances.
“Per @POTUS directive, I have revoked security clearances and barred access to classified information for Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Lisa Monaco, Mark Zaid, Norman Eisen, Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, and Andrew Weissman, along with the 51 signers of the Hunter Biden ‘disinformation’ letter. The President’s Daily Brief is no longer being provided to former President Biden,” she wrote.
However, some of those clearances were stripped have yet to be formally notified.
Neither the White House nor Gabbard’s office responded to requests for comment.
