Trump has issued executive orders (EOs) targeting law firms he sees as his political enemies, mainly because they have worked with the Democrats, have been employed in lawsuits against him, or they’ve employed lawyers who have. The EOs ban these law firms from government property, meaning their employees can’t access courts to represent their clients, essentially destroying multimillion and multibillion-dollar businesses.
Read, for example, the EO against Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP (aka Wilmer Hale) to see how Trump has suspended any active security clearances held by their employees, limiting official access to Federal Government buildings. He has also terminated "any contract, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, including the Federal Acquisition Regulation, for which WilmerHale has been hired to perform any service."
What's their crime? They’re accused, among other things, of engaging in “obvious partisan representations to achieve political ends, supports efforts to discriminate on the basis of race, backs the obstruction of efforts to prevent illegal aliens from committing horrific crimes and trafficking deadly drugs within our borders, and furthers the degradation of the quality of American elections, including by supporting efforts designed to enable noncitizens to vote.”
He has done the same to Covington and Burling who simply had the nerve to employ Jack Smith, the special prosecutor assigned to his insurrection and classified documents cases who resigned when Trump won in November. The firm also provided pro bono legal services to Smith. The two criminal cases were dismissed after Trump managed to return to the White House.
Perkins Coie, another Washington law firm, represented Hilary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign and represented Democrats in various voting rights challenges during the 2020 election. They also hired private investigators to research Trump's connections with Russia and paid the former British spy, Christopher Steele, to prepare a dossier on his suspicious links. All unforgivable in Trump's paranoid brain.
None of this would stand up in any court in America, but winning wouldn’t prevent them from being targeted unofficially anyway. It's absolutely shocking but par for the course with Trump.
Some have already folded. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom have agreed to provide at least $100 million in pro-bono legal services to the Trump administration and they won't engage in so-called DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) hiring activities. He rescinded an EO against another law firm Paul, Weiss, after they agreed to perform $40 million worth of pro bono (free) legal work for causes that the president supports.
Others with more backbone and ethics have launched legal challenges. Jenner and Block have filed a case against Trump and his administration in Washington. Perkins Coie has done the same. A court recently rejected government attempts to have the judge removed from their case.
Jenner and Block's crime was to have once employed Andrew Weissmann, a lawyer who served on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team that investigated Trump during his first term in office over potential connections between his 2016 campaign and Russia
Yesterday, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to expand the campaign beyond individual law firms by sanctioning individual lawyers who “engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation” against his administration.
So much for Trump attacking national law, essentially pressuring lawyers to grant him and his acolytes immunity from prosecution, he is doing much the same internationally.
Ukraine
You may also have noted a revised draft minerals deal has been seen by the FT that is even worse and more one-sided than the first. It is extortion, plain and simple. The FT reports:
"The draft deal marks a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to seize control of Ukraine’s lucrative natural resources as it presses to bring the conflict to an end. It would apply to all mineral resources, including oil and gas, and major energy assets across the entire Ukrainian territory."
"But three senior Ukrainian officials told the FT that was unlikely to happen. One said the new US draft proposal was 'unfair', while another likened it to 'robbery'."
America would be due half of the "Ukraine Agreed Revenue" in perpetuity!!! The agreed revenue "shall mean fifty percent (50%) of all: "revenues received by the Ukrainian Government or its designee from the issuance of Licenses by the Ukrainian Government after the Start Date with respect to the extraction, exploitation or other use of Natural Resource Relevant Assets or Infrastructure Relevant Assets."
This is just unbelievable to me.
Greenland
JD Vance visited the US base on Greenland yesterday and claimed that Denmark hasn’t devoted the resources to keep the base, American troops, and the people of Greenland safe from "very aggressive incursions from Russia and China." He appears to live in a parallel universe. What incursions is he talking about?
Watch this clip:
Russia has its hands full in Ukraine and as far as I know neither they or the Chinese have been eyeing up Greenland. In fact, the only country that has is the USA. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Greenland is protected by NATO. Protestations that the US needs the island for security make no sense, they are already providing it via NATO..
Trump clearly plans to occupy Greenland. He has said America must “have” it for world peace. Vance is just getting the administration’s excuses in early.
Whatever he plans will cause a further rift between the US and Europe; it will trigger resignations in the American military, and the next Democrat to be president will return the territory to Denmark. Using or threatening force might deliver a short-term success, but it will do irreparable damage to what’s left of America’s reputation.
Vance reportedly said they have ‘no plans’ to use force, which means they are almost certainly planning to do so.
Americans have a duty to behave responsibly when electing a president who is de facto the leader of the free world, but in electing Trump they have not. Europe will have to get used to the fact that whatever this century holds for us, the USA from now on, is never more than four years away from anarchy.
We should also now accept that the UN is irretrievably broken. When three of the five permanent members of the Security Council, Russia, China, and America, are either actively engaged in occupying sovereign nations or are clearly planning to do so, the UN isn't fit for anything.
