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Law Firms

Did 9 firms making deals with Trump violate bribery, anti-fraud laws? Democratic letters seek answers

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 24, 2025, 2:26 pm CDT

Sixteen Democratic lawmakers have sent letters to nine law firms that ask them to disavow deals with President Donald Trump and to answer questions about their legality.

Among the 16 Democrats are two lawmakers leading the effort: U.S. Rep. Dave Min of California and U.S. Rep. April McClain Delaney of Maryland, who are both lawyers, according to an April 24 press release and ABC News.

HuffPost reporter Jennifer Bendery posted a link to the documents on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The nine firms getting the letters are Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Milbank; Willkie Farr & Gallagher; Kirkland & Ellis; A&O Shearman; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Latham & Watkins; and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.

Firms making the deals pledged to devote millions of dollars in pro bono hours to issues supported by the firms and Trump. Their agreements allowed them to avoid executive orders that, among other things, call for the suspension of lawyers’ security clearances and imperil their clients’ government contracts.

According to the letters, continued performance under the agreements may be unenforceable under contracts law, would have negative effects on the legal system, could expose the firms to civil and criminal liability, and creates potential ethics violations with respect to conflicts of interest and limits on future law practice.

Agreements of this kind “signal acquiescence to an abuse of federal power, raising serious questions about how or whether your firm would represent clients or take on matters that might be seen as antagonistic to President Trump or his agenda,” the letters said.

The letters asked firms to explain whether the deals open themselves up to liability for:

  • Violating federal bribery laws by offering something of value to influence official acts.

  • Aiding and abetting violations of the Hobbs Act, which makes it a crime to affect commerce by extortion.

  • Violating federal anti-fraud laws that prohibit schemes to defraud the public of the honest services of public officials.

  • Violating the federal law that prohibits participation in a racketeering enterprise.

  • Violating state statutes that ban providing public servants with benefits to influence actions.

The April 24 letters follow inquiries sent to firms from U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who are both Democrats, according to Reuters and an April 22 press release.

The first batch of letters by Blumenthal and Raskin sought more information on attempts made to poach lawyers and clients from one of the targeted firms and asked six firms to retain records pertaining to the executive orders. A second group of letters asked five firms for more information while asserting that their “capitulation” allowed Trump to suppress their speech.

“Your agreement makes you complicit in efforts to undermine the rule of law and to turn private attorneys into President Trump’s personal law firm, ready to do whatever he decides,” Blumenthal and Raskin wrote.

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A Democratic member of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, an independent administrative agency tasked with administering “labor-management relations” for over 2 million government workers, was “unlawfully removed” by President Donald Trump last month, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

Susan Tsui Grundmann, who was axed on Feb. 11, has been suing the Trump administration for what she claims was an “unconstitutional” removal from the FLRA, which is a three-member agency charged by Congress with “managing federal labor relations” in an “unbiased” and “fair” way that she says is not supposed to “shift with political whims.” With Grundmann in, the FLRA would have a 2-1 Democratic majority until her term expires in July.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan handed down her ruling in the case — siding with Grundmann and her argument that Trump’s firing of her was “unlawful” — after the Justice Department argued Article II of the Constitution gave Trump the power to remove executive branch officials without cause, including members of the FLRA.

“The Government vigorously defends Ms. Grundmann’s hasty termination on the basis that the Constitution vests the entirety of the ‘executive Power’ in the President,” Sooknanan said. “The government’s arguments paint with a broad brush and threaten to upend fundamental protections in our Constitution. But ours is not an autocracy; it is a system of checks and balances. Our Founders recognized that the concentration of power in one branch of government would spell disaster.”

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3. Meet Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias,…

Election Law

Meet Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias, who wears GOP scorn ‘like a badge of honor’

By Debra Cassens Weiss

November 4, 2024, 11:23 am CST

Updated: Even his detractors call Democratic lawyer Marc Elias one of the toughest election lawyers in the country.

“In his three-decade career,” the New York Times reports in a profile, Elias “has arguably done more than any single person outside government to shape the Democratic Party and the rules under which all campaigns and elections in the United States are conducted.”

Supporters celebrate Elias’ many victories, including his fight against efforts to overturn the 2020 election and two significant decisions last year by the U.S. Supreme Court, the New York Times says. This year, Elias “has been in the middle” of Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign’s response to dozens of Republican lawsuits challenging voting rules.

“My team of lawyers is better than the GOP’s,” Elias recently bragged, as recounted by the Hill. “And we’re ready to beat them again in 2024.”

Elias was similarly combative when Republicans recently targeted him in an ad campaign highlighting his work to keep third-party candidates off ballots. The campaign portrayed Elias as a hypocrite for trying to eliminate voter choice, according to the New York Times. Elias responded in a social media post.

“Republicans hate me because I stand up to them and fight. I wear their scorn like a badge of honor,” Elias wrote.

Elias grew up suburban New York, according to the New York Times profile. His father was a small-business owner and both parents were “New Deal Democrats,” he once told Roll Call. He has a law degree and a master’s degree in political science from Duke University.

Elias joined Perkins Coie after law school and became leader of its political law practice in 2009. In that role, the New York Times says, he “expanded its team of lawyers, its client roster and its profits while becoming increasingly influential with key Democratic leaders.”

Elias left Perkins Coie and formed the Elias Law Group in 2021 following controversy over his involvement in the hiring of opposition research company Fusion GPS. That company compiled a dossier with “largely debunked” allegations about former President Donald Trump’s Russia connections, the New York Times says. The Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign paid for the research without their knowledge.

Elias took more than 40 Perkins Coie lawyers with him to form his new law firm.

Firm members helped achieve two Supreme Court victories. In one, the Supreme Court struck down a congressional map that diluted Black voting strength in Alabama. In the other, the Supreme Court rejected the “independent state legislature” theory contending that state legislatures have the exclusive power to regulate congressional elections. The high court ruled that state courts have the power to review congressional maps created by state legislatures.

In a controversial move in January, the Elias Law Group asked the Federal Election Commission to allow a political action committee funded by billionaire George Soros to coordinate with Democratic campaigns and party committees in Texas for voter turnout efforts.

The FEC approved the petition. It wasn’t long before the Trump campaign used the opinion to coordinate with groups funded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other wealthy donors, according to the New York Times.

One critic is Tom Moore, a former chief of staff for a Democratic member of the FEC who opposed the petition.

“Opening the money faucets up as wide as they go strikes me as a bad idea for Democrats because Republicans just have a bigger faucet,” Moore told the New York Times.

Elias responded to the New York Times in a statement.

“I am proud of my record in fighting back against Republican voter suppression, election subversion and gerrymandering in court,” he said.

See also:

5th Circuit sanctions Marc Elias and other Perkins Coie lawyers for ‘redundant and misleading’ motion

Perkins Coie hired company that compiled Trump dossier

Updated Nov. 4 at 12:20 p.m. to move information regarding sanctions to a “See also” list.