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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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President Donald Trump listens as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).

Members of President Donald Trump‘s cabinet violated federal law by using the encrypted Signal messaging app to discuss military actions in the Middle East, a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Washington, D.C., alleges.

In a 16-page filing, nonprofit government transparency organization American Oversight alleges Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and various other Trump administration officials violated the Federal Records Act (FRA) during a multiple-day group chat about how to plan and “coordinate imminent U.S. military strikes in Yemen.”

The conversations in question occurred between March 11 and March 15, according to the lawsuit. The government’s use of the popular messaging app was first reported this week when the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported that he was accidentally added to the group chat by national security adviser Michael Waltz.

Signal is widely used for its encryption functions. The app is also well-known for its ability to automatically delete messages after a certain period of time, subject to user specifications. The use of the auto-delete feature in the chat, the plaintiffs say, runs afoul of federal law.

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The Modern Law Library

Yale Law’s Owen Fiss talks about threats to democracy and ‘Why We Vote’

By Lee Rawles

January 31, 2024, 8:47 am CST

After 50 years as a professor at Yale Law School, Owen Fiss says his students are still idealistic and passionate about the rights won in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.

As a young lawyer in the late 1960s, Fiss worked with the Department of Justice to implement those laws. A classroom discussion in spring 2020 prompted him to draw upon his legal expertise and decades of experience to produce Why We Vote, his new book.

In this episode of The Modern Law Library podcast, Fiss speaks with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles about the paradox of the court system—the least democratic branch of government—having the responsibility of safeguarding the right to vote.

He looks back on his work with the DOJ in southern states and his time as a clerk for then-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (then on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York) and then-Justice William J. Brennan Jr.

Rawles and Fiss also discuss recent threats to the electoral system and the right to vote, including the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Fiss shares his thoughts about Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and whether former President Donald Trump should be removed from the ballot on that basis.

While every book that he writes is for his students, Fiss says, he hopes Why We Vote can impress upon a broader audience the privilege and duty of voting and participating in a democracy.

In This Podcast:

Owen Fiss

Owen Fiss is a Sterling professor emeritus of law and professorial lecturer in law at Yale University. He was educated at Dartmouth College, Oxford University and Harvard University. He clerked for then-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (when Marshall was a judge on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York) and later for then-Justice William J. Brennan Jr. Fiss also worked in the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice from 1966 to 1968. Before coming to Yale, Fiss taught at the University of Chicago. Fiss is the author of many articles and books, including The Civil Rights Injunction, Troubled Beginnings of the Modern State, The Structure of Procedure (with Robert Cover), and Liberalism Divided: Freedom of Speech and the Many Uses of State Power. His most recent book is Why We Vote.