By Mike Scarcella
(Reuters) – U.S. law firm Perkins Coie has sued President Donald Trump’s administration in federal court, claiming Trump illegally retaliated against the firm over its prior work for his former opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, and its internal policies promoting diversity and inclusion.
The 1,100-lawyer firm was targeted by Trump, a Republican, in an executive order on March 6. It filed its lawsuit on Tuesday in federal court in Washington, D.C., according to an entry on the court’s docket.
The lawsuit asked a U.S. judge to declare Trump’s executive order unlawful and to bar its enforcement, a source familiar with the complaint said. The lawsuit was not immediately accessible on the court docket.
Trump in his order directed federal agencies to review any contracts between the firm and the government, and to temporarily suspend security clearances that lawyers at the firm use to access and handle some sensitive information.
The order also said agencies should consider limiting Perkins Coie lawyers’ access to government buildings and officials and ending any contractual work with the firm’s clients.
The lawsuit by Seattle-founded Perkins Coie marked an escalation of a growing feud between Trump and law firms that he has accused of being aligned against his administration’s interests.
Trump in February issued a similar but more narrow order against law firm Covington & Burling, which is representing the special counsel who led now-dismissed criminal prosecutions of Trump over his handling of classified information and his alleged effort to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
The White House order stripped security clearances from two lawyers at Covington and said the firm should lose any government contracts. It does not appear the firm has any pending contracts with federal agencies.
Covington has defended its work for Jack Smith, the special counsel.
Perkins Coie and Covington are among nearly a dozen prominent law firms that are representing clients in lawsuits challenging Trump administration policies and priorities, including its efforts to curtail immigration, agency grants and transgender rights.
Trump’s order against Perkins Coie criticized the firm over its work for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential run.
Perkins Coie has long been criticized by some on the American right over its work with the Washington research firm Fusion GPS. Fusion paid a former British spy’s company to assemble a dossier outlining Russian financial and personal links to Trump’s 2016 election campaign.
Trump has denied the claims in the dossier, and he has more broadly disputed that his campaign then had any ties to Russia. A U.S. judge in Florida in 2022 dismissed a lawsuit that Trump lodged against Clinton, Perkins Coie and others that claimed a conspiracy to rig the election.
The judge said Trump’s lawsuit was a “political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him,” and lacked legal merit. An appeal is pending in the case.
Perkins Coie has also faced criticism over the work of one of its former partners, Michael Sussmann, who advised the 2016 Clinton presidential campaign.
Sussmann was acquitted in 2022 at trial on a charge that he lied to the FBI when he met with the bureau in 2016 to share a tip about a possible link between Trump’s business and a Russian bank.
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella; Editing by David Bario and Rod Nickel)
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