WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of a prominent law firm reached a deal with Donald Trump last week to avoid the consequences of the White House executive order in an email Sunday because the order “is easy to destroy our company” and put it into practice.
Brad Karp’s message provides the most detailed public explanation, a decision to make a major concession to the White House in the face of executive orders from his companies Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Garrison and Wharton.
The order is the latest in a series of similar actions against law firms whose lawyers have executed legal work that Trump disagrees with, threatening to suspend Paul Weiss’s security permit and terminate any federal contracts involving the company. It was cited as an explanation of the fact that former Paul Weiss lawyer Mark Pomerantz has been a central participant in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office’s investigation into Trump’s finances before Trump became president.
However, on Thursday night, Trump announced that he had canceled the March 14 order after a meeting with Karp. The White House said the company has agreed to contribute $40 million in free legal services to support certain Trump administration agenda items, including fighting anti-Semitism; reviewing its recruitment practices and “not adopting, using or complying with any DEI” policy; regardless of political affiliation, it will attract customers.
The resolution sparked strong opposition from the legal community, with lawyers criticizing companies for approving Trump rather than standing on him, especially as he used the presidency to threaten lawyers and companies’ livelihoods, which he believed had crossed him. The deal also reinforces Trump’s recent success in extracting concessions among broad goals of academia and private businesses, who chose to compromise rather than fight.
In an email with Paul Weiss obtained by The Associated Press, Karp described the order as a “existential crisis” to the company. He said the company is likely not to survive a protracted battle with the Trump administration.
“Executive orders can easily destroy our companies,” Karp wrote. “This reduces the entire weight of the government on our companies, our people and our clients. In particular, if they continue to use the company as lawyers and target everyone and the company with obvious efforts, the government will not hire our employees.”
The company was initially ready to challenge the executive order in court, another law firm that targeted Perkins Coie, the Trump executive order, wrote. He said that even if a team of lawyers prepares the complaint, it is clear that even if we successfully ban executive orders in litigation, the basic problem cannot be solved, which is what clients think our company is connected to the government. ”
He also said he hopes the company will receive support from other law firms that have never been realized.
“It is disappointing that we are far from supporting and we learn that certain other companies are seeking to capitalize on our vulnerability by actively recruiting clients and recruiting our attorneys,” he wrote.
In this context, when the company learns that the government may be willing to sign a deal, it tries to do so and negotiate a resolution in “days.”
“I know many of you are uncomfortable at all because we can solve any solution. It’s totally understandable.” Karp wrote to his colleagues, adding: “There is no correct answer to what we find ourselves in.”
He added: “It’s easy for commentators to judge our actions from the outside of the field. But in the wider world, no one can appreciate the pressure of facing such executive orders until someone points you.”
The company is one of many Trump targets that have recently reached a deal with the administration, rather than further arousing the president’s anger.
For example, on Friday, Columbia University agreed to put its Eastern Research unit under new supervision and overhaul its protest and student discipline rules, acquiescing the Trump administration to enforce these changes that would otherwise lose billions of dollars in federal funding.
Meta and ABC paid Trump’s future presidential library to end the lawsuit filed by Trump. Other technology and financial companies have also publicly retreated from the DEI program in line with Trump’s policy interests.
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Associated Press writer Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to the report.
