A federal judge accused President Donald Trump of trying to metaphorically “kill all the lawyers” in a scathing Friday ruling that declares his assault on a top law firm unconstitutional.
Senior district judge Beryl Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, barred Trump from carrying out the executive order penalizing law firm Perkins Coie for representing 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, one of his political enemies.
“No American President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit targeting a prominent law firm with adverse actions to be executed by all Executive branch agencies but,” Howell wrote, “in purpose and effect, this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’”
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The president’s order had stripped Perkins Coie of security clearances, limited its access to government buildings, and told government agencies to terminate their contracts with the firm.
The 102-page ruling offers a blistering indictment of Trump’s actions before declaring that his order “violates the Constitution and is thus null and void.”
Howell ruled that Trump was retaliating against the law firm for actions that were protected by the First Amendment. She expressed worry that the attack, which Trump has also made against other large law firms that have worked for his political enemies, could diminish law firms’ independence.
“The importance of independent lawyers to ensuring the American judicial system’s fair and impartial administration of justice has been recognized in this country since its founding era,” she wrote.
Perkins Coie said in a statement to NBC News that the ruling “affirms core constitutional freedoms all Americans hold dear, including free speech, due process, and the right to select counsel without the fear of retribution.”
The White House and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s requests for comment.
While some firms targeted by Trump have fought the president in court, others have struck deals to avoid persecution, agreeing to do tens of millions of dollars’ worth of pro bono work for Trump.
Alongside his war on law firms, Trump has attacked the judiciary, defying court orders that restrict his administration’s actions and calling for the impeachment of judges who rule against him.
He has taken issue with Howell in particular.
After she was assigned the Perkins Coie case, the Trump administration tried to have her removed, accusing her of “partiality against and animus towards the president.”
Trump himself said in a Truth Social post last month that Howell had “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” He called her “a highly biased and unfair disaster” and “an unmitigated train wreck.”
In 2019, Howell delivered a big win for House Democrats. She ordered Trump’s Justice Department to hand over grand jury materials from the Robert Mueller-led investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia.
She also made multiple rulings against Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, in which a mob of the president’s supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.
