Trump claims major law firm offers him $100M in pro bono services after exec order threat
President Donald Trump announced through his Truth Social platform on Friday that he's secured yet another "deal" to change the legal employment and representation policies of a prominent white-shoe law firm that his allies have lobbed threats at in recent weeks.
"Today, President Donald J. Trump and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP announce the following agreement regarding a series of actions to be taken by Skadden," wrote Trump.
That agreement, wrote Trump, includes a commitment to $100 million in pro bono legal services to various causes the Trump administration endorses, a commitment not to engage in diversity hiring practices, and to "not deny representation to clients, such as members of politically disenfranchised groups, who have not historically received legal representation from major National Law Firms" because of "the personal political views of individual lawyers."
Shortly before this deal was reached, Skadden was publicly targeted by Dinesh D'Souza, a far-right filmmaker and conspiracy theorist Trump pardoned for campaign finance crimes in his previous term, for representing clients in lawsuits against his widely-discredited "2,000 Mules" documentary alleging, based on misrepresented and debunked evidence, that ballots were being illegally harvested in key states during the 2020 presidential election.
"The Left's game is to ruin us through protracted, costly litigation," he wrote. Tech billionaire Elon Musk shortly weighed in as well, saying "Skadden, this needs to stop now."
On Thursday, The New York Times had reported Skadden entered into talks with Trump to try to avert an executive order targeting them. Trump issued similar executive orders locking out other big law firms that had represented clients in anti-Trump cases from holding security clearances or doing business with the federal government.
One of these law firms that had been targeted in this way, Paul Weiss, reached their own agreement with Trump containing similar terms to that reached by Skadden, causing him to rescind the executive order, and prompting outrage in the legal profession that a prominent law firm would capitulate to attacks against the profession as a whole. Meanwhile, some current plaintiffs against the Trump administration report this is having a chilling effect, discouraging lawyers from representing them.
But other law firms are fighting back in response to the attacks. When Trump targeted the law firm WilmerHale over its ties to former Trump-Russian interference special counsel Robert Mueller, its lawyers hit back, calling the order "unlawful" and vowing to fight it in court.