Perkins Coie executive order 'one of the most sinister' Trump has entered: Luttig

Retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig said Thursday that President Trump's executive order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie is "one of the most sinister" that he "has entered to date."

Speaking on MSNBC, Luttig said Trump had “declared war on the rule of law” even before he returned to the White House.

“In the past several weeks, however, he has really launched a full-frontal assault on the Constitution, the rule of law, our system of justice and the entire legal profession,” Luttig added.

On Wednesday, a judge temporarily froze parts of Trump’s executive order on Perkins Coie, which claims it is being targeted over its past work for Democrats.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, an appointee of former President Obama, temporarily blocked the Trump administration from barring Perkins Coie personnel from entering federal government buildings and requiring government contractors to disclose if they do business with the firm.

Perkins Coie has been a frequent target of Trump's anger for its role in advising Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign and collaborating with Fusion GPS, which is linked to the discredited Steele dossier that contained negative claims about Trump and his alleged ties to Russia.

This latest executive order represents the most extensive effort by the president to go after the firm.

In his Thursday remarks, Luttig accused the Trump administration of targeting law firms “because they represented clients in the past who the president just didn’t like.”

“It’s one of the most sinister of the executive orders that the president has entered to date,” he added.

The conservative former judge has long been a critic of Trump. Just a week before last year's presidential election, he wrote an op-ed for The New York Times saying Trump was not fit to return to the White House.

"One week from today, we will decide whether Donald Trump is fit to be president of the United States again. He is not," Luttig wrote at the time.

The Hill reached out to the Trump administration for comment.

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