(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed his latest executive order punishing a prominent law firm, this time targeting Susman Godfrey.
The order suspends any security clearances held by Susman Godfrey lawyers, restricts their access to government buildings and threatens to cancel federal contracts held by the firm’s clients.
White House aide Will Scharf said the order resembles previous actions the Trump administration has taken against law firms that have been involved in the “weaponization of government or actions of lawfare.”
Houston-based Susman Godfrey represented electronic voting machine maker Dominion Voting Systems in a settlement in 2023 in which Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit related to Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him.
Spokespeople for the firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump earlier issued similar executive orders against four law firms that had connections to his legal or political adversaries.
Three of the firms – Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, and Jenner & Block – sued Trump’s administration and won preliminary rulings that found the orders violated the U.S. Constitution. Another, Paul Weiss, reached a deal with Trump to rescind the order against it.
Susman Godfrey is representing a group of former senior government officials who are supporting Perkins Coie in its case against the administration.
Paul Weiss, as well as Skadden Arps, Milbank and Willkie Farr, agreed in deals with Trump to donate the equivalent of millions of dollars in free legal work to causes approved by his administration.
Trump has said more firms are seeking similar deals. “They’re all lining up,” he said at a White House event on Monday.
The president last month directed the Justice Department to probe lawyers and law firms that handle immigration cases or that sued the government over the past eight years — a group that includes many of the largest U.S. firms.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal, David Thomas, Mike Scarcella and Sara Merken; Writing by Ryan Patrick Jones and David Bario; Editing by David Gregorio)
Comments