Yet another Trump order defeated in court

Not long after taking office, Donald Trump, after promising not to go on a revenge tour, made a clear act of revenge against law firms that had been working with the last administration or officials from the last administration.

Trump wrote an order to suspend security clearances for attorneys who worked for a firm that had been working with Special Counsel Jack Smith and/or Democrats, but that order was just defeated in court.

Suspend Their Clearances

Trump was not in office a month when he went after attorneys at Perkins Coie who had worked with Democrats in trying to take out Trump.

In signing the order to revoke their clearances, Trump stated, “This is an absolute honor to sign. What they’ve done is just terrible. It’s weaponization — you could say weaponization against a political opponent, and it should never be allowed to happen again.”

If the clearances were lost, it would be devastating for the firm, which relies on these clearances for much of its government work.

The firm immediately announced its intention to fight the order and sue Trump to regain the clearances.

The Suit

Just as everyone expected, Perkins Coie sued the administration to get its clearances back, claiming that Trump was on a revenge tour, and quite frankly, it was hard to look at this move as anything but revenge whether you support Trump or not.

The firm claimed that the attorneys who worked on the case had since left and were only a small percentage of the more than 1,000 attorneys it employed.

The suit stated, “The Order is an affront to the Constitution and our adversarial system of justice. 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.”

When the suit was issued, it just did not seem like the administration had a strong case to pull these clearances, and our suspicions were right based on the most recent court ruling.

Order Rejected

The case fell before U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee, and it was not a good day for Trump in the courtroom.

The judge ruled the order violated the Constitution on multiple fronts, immediately nullifying the order.

Howell, in part, stated, “No American President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit targeting a prominent law firm with adverse actions to be executed by all Executive branch agencies but, in purpose and effect, this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’”

I am sure the administration will look to appeal the decision, but don’t look for any relief at the appellate level or by the Supreme Court. This is going to be just one more case where the American people are forced to foot the legal bill for an unconstitutional order pushed by Donald Trump simply because he or his attorneys did not do the legwork in regard to the constitutionality of the order.