President Donald Trump on Thursday suspended security clearances for Perkins Coie and ordered investigations of at least 15 law firms over diversity programs.
The directive targets Perkins Coie employees because the firm in 2016, while working for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, “hired Fusion GPS, which then manufactured a false ‘dossier’ designed to steal an election,” according to an executive order signed by Trump.
“It’s weaponization,” Trump said in the Oval Office, “you could say weaponization against a political opponent, and it should never be allowed to happen again.”
Perkins Coie in a statement called the order “patently unlawful, and we intend to challenge it.”
The order also directs the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate possible racial discrimination at “representative large, influential, or industry leading law firms.” The order doesn’t name the targets, but Trump asked aide Will Scharf, “You’re looking at about 15 different firms?” and Scharf responded, “That or more sir, yes.”
Trump’s targeting of Perkins Coie comes on the heels of his order to revoke security clearances and any active business with Covington & Burling for its representation of former special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two failed criminal cases against the president.
Democratic Ties
Perkins Coie has been a top outside legal adviser to Democrats in previous election cycles. It came under fire for its role in opposition research on Trump ahead of the 2016 White House election. Former Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann, a lawyer to Clinton, in 2022 was acquitted on a criminal charge of lying to the FBI.
The firm is the former home to significant Democratic lawyers including Marc Elias and Bob Bauer. Elias, who served as counsel for the Harris-Walz presidential campaign, ran the firm’s political practice group before launching his own boutique in 2021. Bauer served in the Obama administration and was tapped as former President Biden’s personal lawyer in 2023.
Trump’s order asks agencies to review any contracts with the law firm, and with entities that do business with it, for possible termination. It also tells agency officials to refrain from hiring employees of Perkins Coie and to place limitations on the firm’s employees entering federal government buildings.
Elias, formerly a lawyer for the 2016 Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, retained Washington firm Fusion GPS to conduct the research that resulted in the Steele dossier, the Washington Post reported in 2017. The dossier alleged Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russian government officials.
DEI at Law Firms
Trump’s section of the order regarding racial discrimination also asks the Justice Department to investigate law firms that do business with the federal government “for compliance with race-based and sex-based non-discrimination laws.” It instructs Justice to “take any additional actions the Attorney General deems appropriate in light of the evidence uncovered.”
The order singles out Perkins Coie as a firm that “racially discriminates against its own attorneys and staff, and against applicants.” It said Perkins Coie publicly announced percentage quotas in 2019 for hiring and promotion on the basis of race and other categories prohibited by civil rights laws and “proudly excluded” applicants on that basis.
Perkins Coie was one of many law firms to overhaul its diversity and inclusion programs and initiatives following the Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision to curb the use of race in college admissions. Perkins Coie and Morrison Foerster were both sued by group run by Edward Blum’s anti-affirmative action group.
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Feb. 28 urged the American Bar Association to completely scrap its diversity mandate for law schools. The ABA already had temporarily suspended enforcement of its diversity mandate for law schools, citing recent messaging from the Trump administration. Law schools have dropped “diversity” from their websites and rankings.
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