Caught

Last year, I discussed the book that the retired lawyer Mark Pomerantz wrote about the effort to prosecute Donald Trump: “I don’t know how to begin telling you clearly enough how disturbing it is.” Read that post here:

Pomerantz, volunteering after retirement as an unpaid full-time prosecutor at the Manhattan DA’s office, started with the desire to put Trump in prison, then tried to figure out a way to do it. He started with a name, not a crime, in a shameful act of prosecutorial abuse.

Many hands joined that shameful work, and Pomerantz borrowed lawyers and labor from his old law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. The firm sent over some lawyers to volunteer for the DA’s office, and pitched in with legal analysis from their offices. Go to the Amazon preview for Pomerantz’s book and search for their contribution:

So be very clear about this: A law firm participated in a serious and sustained effort to find a way to put the Republican presidential frontrunner, a former President of the United States, in prison, in an election year, and they did so in an effort that started without a complaint or a victim. They didn’t have to do this. They chose to. They made the imprisonment of the political opposition a major pro bono project.

Elected to the presidency despite the effort to imprison him, or in significant part because of voter backlash to that morally insane effort, Trump struck back: He stripped the firm, and every lawyer in it, of their government-controlled security clearances, making it impossible for a major law firm with an important office in the District of Columbia to participate in cases with national security implications and classified evidence. Recognizing a politicized organization, he boxed it out of a big piece of their bread and butter. No government contracts, no cases on the other side of the courtroom from the government that require a security clearance to review the evidence.

The news today is that Trump has given back those security clearances, after this:

As part of the agreement, the law firm agreed it would not deny representation to clients based on political views; that it would not use any diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies; and that it would dedicate the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services to support the Trump administration’s initiatives such as assisting veterans, combating antisemitism and “fairness in the Justice System.”

The White House said in a statement that Trump made the decision after meeting with Brad Karp, chair of the law firm.

Predictably, the news media is framing this development as an example of corporate entities bending the knee and capitulating as a mad tyrant lashes out at them for no reason. The Guardian, predictably: “The firm becomes the latest corporate target to make concessions to the president to avoid his ire.”

That’s not what happened. They made extremely dangerous choices, and then they were forced to confront what they did. This is a good outcome — for Trump, for us, for the republic, for our children and our grandchildren. Read Mark Pomerantz’s book if you doubt it. Thanks for publishing your confession, Mark.