Big Law’s Big Capitulation
In the Trump era, the lawyers have chosen to pay, not fight, the mob boss.
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Paul Weiss Pays the Dane-Geld
by William Kristol
In November 2024, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP was recognized by Bloomberg Law in a special report on “Pro Bono Innovators” as a law firm “going above and beyond in delivering pro bono services.”
Yesterday Paul Weiss lived up to this praise. It went above and beyond in delivering pro bono services. The firm will be dedicating, according to the president of the United States, “the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services over the course of President Trump’s term to support the Administration’s initiatives.”
After all, President Trump only has the entire federal government at his disposal to support his initiatives. He needs and deserves the help of Paul Weiss. As the firm explains on its website, “Throughout our firm’s history, we have maintained an unwavering commitment to providing pro bono legal assistance to the most vulnerable members of our society and in support of the public interest.” How could it not step up and chip in to help this vulnerable man, Donald Trump?
The answer, of course, is that the firm could have simply said “no.” It could have refused to be extorted by the president of the United States and contested his March 14 executive order in a court of law.
But it chose capitulation. And then it couched that capitulation under the umbrella of doing “pro bono” work, as if this was a collective agreement to pursue the public interest and not the end product of a shakedown.
I won’t dilate on the details of this capitulation by Paul Weiss. You can read the New York Times’s account if you want to be depressed.
I’ll only note that last week a federal judge ruled that a very similar order from Trump targeting another law firm, Perkins Coie, was very likely unconstitutional, and in fact she issued a temporary restraining order halting it. Paul Weiss had every reason to expect that in court, their famed litigators would defeat Trump’s extraordinary diktat that the government should cut off all business with the firm and cease in any way engaging with it.
But eventual victory in court wouldn’t have prevented the firm from paying a price. This was especially the case in the absence of expressions of solidarity from other law firms, or of encouragement from clients to stand strong. Our proud civic and business leaders turn out not to be too proud to yield when principle comes into conflict with profit. And they have no interest in heeding the admonition of Edmund Burke: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
So they are falling, one by one. Only, in this case, there wasn’t even much in the way of a struggle.
In return for the capitulation, President Trump withdrew his March 14 Executive Order targeting Paul Weiss. But he hasn’t withdrawn his assault on the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law. Quite the contrary. Soon after reveling in his humiliation of Paul Weiss, Trump renewed his attacks on Judge James Boasberg, who has tried to uphold the rule of law regarding the deportation of Venezuelans to El Salvador. And he attacked “Radical Left Judges” in general who cannot be “allowed to stand in the way of JUSTICE.”
The authoritarians accept each capitulation and stay on the attack. They don’t rest. Paul Weiss may think it is in the clear. But it has only temporarily bought some peace.
Over a century ago, Rudyard Kipling warned about succumbing to the unjust demands of extortionists. He was writing in the context of foreign policy, of one nation yielding to bullying from another, but his counsel applies equally well at home:
We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!
Our institutions are racing to pay the Dane-geld. The end of that game is oppression and shame, and a republic that is lost.
Hey, Remember [Insert Trump Controversy From Two Days Ago]!?
by Andrew Egger
Am I crazy, or is it crazy how quickly Trump’s claim to have declared a heap of Biden pardons “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NOW FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT” has dropped out of the news?
There was the initial claim: Trump’s bananas insistence that Biden’s apparent use of an autopen proved that the pardons of Liz Cheney, Anthony Fauci, and other supposed Trump enemies had been hatched by scheming aides behind the former president’s back. Then there was the returning fusillade of fact-checks and historical analyses, all showing Trump was being ridiculous on the merits.
And then—nothing. We all turned to other matters, like DOGE’s jackbooted takeover of the U.S. Institute for Peace, or Trump’s annihilation of due process for Venezuelans deported to El Salvador, or Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s hilariously corrupt public pleas for Americans to buy Tesla stock. Fair enough. There’s a lot going on.
But as I wrote about yesterday, there is danger in simply growing accustomed to a changed, worse world. And we should be clear about where we left things here.
Trump is wrong on the merits about these pardons in every conceivable way—factually, historically, legally. And yet he has still given his goons in federal law enforcement permission to go after the enemies Biden pardoned. He is urging them to launch investigations. Do we think they’ll tap the brakes because of a stern scolding from PolitiFact?
Even the FBI can only get so far on the fiat of the emperor alone. If the feds actually tried to charge Cheney and her fellow members of the House January 6th Committee with crimes, Biden’s pardons would certainly be of use to them then. But Cheney et al. were never in much danger of criminal conviction. They never committed any crimes!
The real danger to these Trump opponents—the danger Biden’s pardons were expressly intended to spare them—was the damage that could be done to them by a hostile federal investigation itself. This is the regimen of pain Trump has now put back on the table.
You know who it sure would be nice to hear from about this? Joe Biden. Trump’s ridiculous claim is grounded in the notion that Biden’s pardons were carried out behind his back and without his knowledge. Would it be so much to ask Biden to publicly refute this?
Yes, presidents tend to recede into the background when they leave office. Yes, there are a million other things going on, and Team Biden may think autopengate is too small and stupid a controversy to merit breaking their silence. But Trump is lawlessly attempting to uproot permanent actions Biden took just two months ago. The ink is barely dry on the pardons. Trump’s claim may be stupid, but it’s anything but small.
We asked Biden’s office about all this. Naturally, a spokesperson declined to comment.
Should they change their mind, let me suggest a script. “Hey Donald, I see you’ve been saying I didn’t actually pardon the members of the January 6th committee and other patriots you consider your enemies,” Biden could say. “I know it’s hard for you, I know how much you’re itching to get your little hands on them now that you’re back in power, to make them hurt for daring to call you out. That’s exactly why I pardoned them in the first place. You’ll have to find another way to vent your spleen—maybe a few more posts whining about the economy I left you will help.”
AROUND THE BULWARK
The Supreme Allied Commander Must Be an American… Gen. Mark Hertling explains why there’s simply no realistic alternative.
Life in the Wilderness… Can be pretty lucrative! Ilyse Hogue reports on how Candace Owens went from banishment from the Daily Wire for repeat antisemitism to building a massive audience talking about Blake Lively.
Speaking of The Daily Wire… In Will Sommer’s False Flag newsletter, a look at the fall of little “God King” Jeremy Boreing, who traded his co-CEO position for an “advisory role.”
America’s Nuclear Umbrella Is Open and Must Stay Open… There’s no alternative to the American deterrent—not for the United States, and not for Europe, argue Amb, Eric Edelman and Franklin C. Miller.
Quick Hits
THEY’RE TERRORISTS IF WE SAY THEY’RE TERRORISTS: “We’re going to wield power lawlessly, but only against terrorists!” This is becoming the basic mass-deportation pitch of the Trump administration, which last weekend sent alleged Venezuelan gang members to a Salvadoran prison with no due process under the Alien Enemies Act and in seeming defiance of a court order.
How extensively does the administration plan to ignore basic civil liberties as it pursues this goal? “Trump administration lawyers have determined,” the New York Times reported yesterday, “that an 18th-century wartime law the president has invoked to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang allows federal agents to enter homes without a warrant, according to people familiar with internal discussions.”
Entering homes to make warrantless arrests! Sounds pretty bad—good thing it’ll only be used on terrorists, right? Well, uh, about that: “Sworn declarations filed last night confirm the Trump admin sent INNOCENT people to rot in prison in El Salvador,” said immigration policy expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick yesterday, “including a professional soccer player jailed and tortured by the Maduro regime, who entered this country LEGALLY to seek asylum, and who has NO CRIMINAL RECORD in either country.”
Reichlin-Melnick was citing a sworn deposition from Linette Tobin, the American immigration attorney for Venezuelan asylum-seeker Jerce Reyes Barrios. DHS flagged Reyes Barrios as a gang member, Tobin said, because of a soccer-related tattoo on his arm and a social media picture of him making a “rock on” gesture. Check out Adrian Carrasquillo’s Huddled Masses newsletter later today for more on how tattoos are becoming a big component of the deportation regime—and a flimsy one, too.
THE VIBE SHIFT GOES LOCAL: Maybe you were wondering what the founder of Pirate’s Booty Snacks was up to these days? Well, wonder no longer! Here’s NBC News:
The founder of Pirate’s Booty Snacks lost his chaotic bid for mayor of a tiny New York community after he claimed he was the village leader and had the authority to replace the entire local government, officials said Thursday.
Elena Villafane, the incumbent mayor of Sea Cliff, defeated Pirate’s Booty Snacks founder Robert Ehrlich, 1,064-62, on Tuesday in the village, which is about 26 miles northwest of midtown Manhattan.
Villafane had been running unopposed for her third two-year term when Ehrlich jumped into the fray a week ago Monday.
That’s when Ehrlich went to Village Hall and “presented a statement falsely asserting his authority as mayor, demanding access to office space, and declaring that the entire Village staff was fired effective immediately but could reapply for their jobs,” the village said in a statement. . . . The brazen assertions stunned village officials who said they’d never seen or heard from Ehrlich before in any civic context.
Now, this doesn’t sound great, but maybe we should hear him out? He probably just wants to run Sea Cliff like a business! Make it more efficient! Sweep out the entrenched village bureaucracy, who may have been getting up to who knows what kind of villainy!! Maybe Ehrlich should give Elon Musk a call—it sounds like Sea Cliff needs its own DOGE.
Cheap Shots
So, the white-shoe law firms are not going to hang together. Then they will all hang seperately.
A deeper analysis is needed to address the structural decay underlying this capitulation. The devaluation of civic responsibility is not just a moral failure but the predictable outcome of a society so deregulated and distorted by neoliberal incentives that prioritizing profit over principles feels like survival. We are witnessing the grotesque culmination of excessive neoliberal designs, where valuing money over integrity has been normalized. This period’s dark heart lies in the pervasive anxiety ruling people's lives — from those scraping by to those hoarding wealth out of fear. Until we confront this structural reality, critiques of moral cowardice will remain incomplete.