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Left: President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 4, 2025 (AP Photo/Alex Brandon). Right: Right: Hillary Clinton speaks during an event with first lady Jill Biden to celebrate the 2023 Praemium Imperiale Laureates in the East Room of the White House, Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023 (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
Perkins Coie, the law firm that represented Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign, is suing the Trump administration over an allegedly unconstitutional executive order intended to “bully” and “retaliate against” the firm for representing clients that the president “perceives as political enemies.”
Donald Trump last week signed an order entitled “Addressing Risks From Perkins Coie LLP,” in which he accused the firm of “undermining democratic elections” and engaging in racially discriminatory hiring practices. The order also purports to suspend security clearances for Perkins Coie employees, bar them from accessing government buildings, and terminate any contracts the firm may have with the government.
The 43-page complaint filed Tuesday in Washington, D.C., federal court does not mince words, starting with an opening salvo attacking the order in the first paragraph.
“The Order is an affront to the Constitution and our adversarial system of justice,” the complaint states. “Its plain purpose is to bully those who advocate points of view that the President perceives as adverse to the views of his Administration, whether those views are presented on behalf of paying or pro bono clients.”
The firm states that it filed the suit against the administration “reluctantly,” but ultimately refused to take the president’s attack on its business lying down.
“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,” the filing states. “Perkins Coie cannot allow its clients to be bullied. The firm is committed to a resolute defense of the rule of law, without regard to party or ideology, and therefore brings this lawsuit to declare the Order unlawful and to enjoin its implementation.”
The complaint accuses the administration of violating the separation of powers by effectively deciding that the firm had engaged in “misconduct,” then imposing punishments “ex post facto” without giving Perkins Coie or its employees the chance to contest the “false and disparaging claims” made against them.
“The Order’s peculiar title betrays its oddity as an Executive Order, for its purpose is not executive in nature. Rather, the Order reflects a purpose that is judicial — to adjudicate whether a handful of lawyers at Perkins Coie LLP engaged in misconduct in the course of litigation and then to punish them,” the complaint says. “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.”
Trump’s order also exceeds the power of the presidency and violates the First and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, per the complaint.
In addition to accusing Perkins Coie of racism and election interference, Trump’s order specifically calls out the firm’s representation of Clinton and its hiring of Fusion GPS, which led to the infamous “Steele dossier” containing unconfirmed allegations of the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia.
“The dishonest and dangerous activity of the law firm Perkins Coie LLP has affected this country for decades,” the order states. “Notably, in 2016 while representing failed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS, which then manufactured a false ‘dossier’ designed to steal an election. This egregious activity is part of a pattern. Perkins Coie has worked with activist donors including George Soros to judicially overturn popular, necessary, and democratically enacted election laws, including those requiring voter identification.”
The lawsuit emphasizes that Trump already tried to sue Perkins Coie in connection with the 2016 election and its representation of the Clinton campaign with a March 2022, lawsuit that asserted RICO claims and allegedly falsified documents. That suit was dismissed by a federal judge in September 2022.
The Perkins Coie order was similar to a memo the president signed last week in which he directed the heads of all executive departments and agencies to “immediately take steps” to suspend the security clearances and “terminate any engagement” with Covington & Burling over the law firm’s work with former special counsel Jack Smith.
Smith headed a pair of investigations into Trump after his first term in office that resulted in then-private citizen Trump being indicted for allegedly mishandling confidential documents and attempting to undermine the 2020 election. Smith resigned in January and the charges against Trump have since been dropped due to the Justice Department’s long-standing policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
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