Judge Blocks Trump Executive Order Targeting Elite Law Firm, A Blow To His Retribution Campaign

A federal judge on Friday permanently blocked a White House executive order targeting an elite law firm , dealing a setback to President Donald Trump's campaign of retribution against the legal profession.

U.S. District Beryl Howell said the executive order against the firm of Perkins Coie amounted to "unconstitutional retaliation" as she ordered that it be nullified and that the Trump administration halt any enforcement of it.

"No American President," Howell wrote in her 102-page order, "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.'"

The ruling was most definitive rejection to date of Trump's spate of similarly worded executive orders against some of the country's most elite law firms, part of a broader effort by the president to reshape American civil society by targeting perceived adversaries in hopes of extracting concessions from them and bending them to his will. Several of the firms singled out for sanction have either done legal work that Trump has opposed, or currently have or previously had associations with prosecutors who at one point investigated the president.

The edicts have ordered that the security clearances of attorneys at the targeted firms be suspended, that federal contracts be terminated and that their employees be barred from federal buildings. The punished law firms have called the executive orders an affront to the legal system and at odds with the foundational principle that lawyers should be free to represent whomever they'd like without fear of government reprisal.