Trump pulls security clearance of Paul Weiss law firm
President Trump has continued his attack against prominent law firms, pulling the security clearances of attorneys at New York-based Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP (Paul Weiss), and restricting their employees from entering government buildings and receiving funds from federal contracts.
Trump signed the order on Friday, directing that the security clearances of Paul Weiss employees be pulled “pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest,” terminate any contract for which the law firm was hired to perform “any service" and limit government employees from engaging with the firm’s workers while in official capacity.
He also ordered that agency officials should “refrain” from hiring Paui Weiss’s employees “absent a waiver from the head of the agency.”
“My Administration has already taken action to address some of the significant risks and egregious conduct associated with law firms, and I have determined that similar action is necessary to end Government sponsorship of harmful activity by an additional law firm: Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP (Paul Weiss),” Trump said in the order.
Trump went after election lawyer Marc Elias, who worked against Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and former Paul Weiss’s partner Mark Pomerantz during his Friday speech at the Justice Department (DOJ)
“Now, as the chief law enforcement officer in our country, I will insist upon and demand full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred,” Trump said during the address.
While working at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, Pomerantz was engaged in the office’s hush money probe into Trump. The jury found Trump, then a presidential candidate, guilty, but he has denied wrongdoing.
Paul Weiss's spokesperson Laura Van Drie told The Hill in a statement that Pomerantz retired from the firm in 2012 and “went on to work at the District Attorney’s office nearly a decade later.”
“Mr. Pomerantz has not been affiliated with the firm for years,” Van Drie said. “The terms of a similar order were enjoined as unconstitutional earlier this week by a federal district court judge.”
Van Drie referred to U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell temporarily blocking parts of Trump’s executive order on Wednesday that sought to prevent Perkins Coie personnel from entering federal government buildings and forcing contractors to reveal if they engage in business with the firm.
Earlier this month, Trump signed an executive order looking to strip Perkins Coie employees, who did work for Democrats during the 2016 campaign, of security clearances and reviewing the government’s contracts with the law firm.
Trump’s Friday order against Paul Weiss was the third time he has gone after a law firm since taking office, again, in January. Late last month, he suspended clearances for Covington & Burling of a number of outside attorneys that are providing pro bono service to former special counsel Jack Smith.
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