Judge blocks 'unlawful' Trump order targeting law firm that represented Clinton campaign

A federal judge on Wednesday entered an emergency order barring the Trump administration from implementing major parts of its executive order that sought to target the law firm Perkins Coie over its representation of Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016.

District Judge Beryl Howell, ruling from the bench, found that attorneys for Perkins Coie, who filed suit earlier this week, had met the bar for her to enter a temporary restraining order -- determining they would suffer immediate and irreparable harm if provisions of the order targeting the law firm's work with government contractors as well as restrictions on their attorney's access to government buildings were implemented.

In an extraordinary hearing in which the Justice Department put forward Attorney General Pam Bondi's chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, to present its arguments, Howell repeatedly questioned the logic and legality surrounding the order -- which she said had extraordinary breadth and whose language was unlike any other order she'd ever read.

"Regardless of whether the president dislikes the firm's clients ... issuing an executive order targeting the firm based on the president's dislike of the political positions of the firm's clients, or the firm's litigation positions is retaliatory and runs head on into the wall of First Amendment protection," Howell said.

In her ruling blocking parts of the executive order she found "unlawful," Howell stated: "The President is certainly entitled to his own belief, entitled to his preferred causes and he's entitled to hold tight to his own dislikes. The Constitution protects all of us, however, from the exercise of his targeted power based on those dislikes, triggering the force of the federal government down on the lawyers representing his political opponents and challengers to his political actions, as he has done here."

During his exchanges with the judge, Mizelle argued that the order falls squarely within Trump's executive powers and suggested the courts had no jurisdiction to intervene in the matter.

"The president of the United States is authorized under the Constitution to find that there are certain individuals or certain companies that are not trustworthy with the nation's secrets," Mizelle said. "That's something that the president is afforded to do under the Constitution."

Judge Howell pressed Mizelle how Trump's order did anything to address a so-called "threat" from Perkins Coie -- given essentially all of the individuals involved in representation of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign have left the firm.

In one exchange, Howell said to Mizelle that the sweeping nature of some of his arguments sent "chills down my spine."

"When you say that if the president, in his view, takes the position that an individual or an organization or a company is operating a way that is not in the nation's interests, he can issue an executive order like this and take steps to bar that individual, that entity, that company from doing any business with the government, terminate whatever contracts they've got, bar them from federal buildings," Howell said. "I mean, that's a pretty extraordinary power for the president to exercise."

Howell further pressed — what would happen if Trump were to "get annoyed" by the law firm representing Perkins Coie in this lawsuit and issue a separate order targeting them?

"If he made a finding that there's a national security risk with a particular law firm, then yes," Mizelle responded.

Mizelle further sought to downplay the damage Perkins Coie said it has already suffered as a result of the order as "speculative."

"We're being put up with a bunch of 'what-ifs' and boogeymans and ghosts that we're having to fight about," Mizelle said. "None of those ghosts are real. The boogeymen are not real."

The attorney representing Perkins Coie, Dane Butswinkas from the law firm Williams and Connolly, laid out in stark terms the already sweeping damage he said the order has caused since its signing last week.

The firm has lost clients "each day" since the order was implemented, Butswinkas said, and the provision of the order that would restrict Perkins Coie's attorneys from engaging with government contractors could paralyze it from effectively serving it's most high-value clients.

"Every one of the top 15 clients at the law firm has government contracts," Butswinkas said. "I think that accounts for approximately 25% of the revenue of the law firm."

To underscore the urgency of the impact of the executive order, Butswinkas closed his argument speaking in dire terms.

"It truly is life-threatening. I'm not here to exaggerate about it," Butswinkas said. "It will — it will spell the end of the law firm."

At one point in the hearing, the judge raised concern over the provision of the executive order that aims to restrict Perkins Coie from having access to federal buildings. That would, Howell noted, presumably include every federal courthouse in the country --which are technically operated by the General Services Administration.

"I want to make sure -- you had no trouble getting into this building today?" Howell asked.

"Your point ... is a really good one," Butswinkas answered. "They are in charge of access to courthouses ... I mean, I hardly have to explain the colossal damage that that rule, that restriction imposed on one law firm and no other, is for their ability to practice their profession."