WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday he was moving to suspend the security clearances of attorneys at a prominent law firm linked to Democratic-funded opposition research during the 2016 presidential campaign into ties between the Republican candidate and Russia.
The sanction against Perkins Coie is the latest in a series of retributive moves by Trump and his administration targeting a broad cross-section of perceived adversaries, including Justice Department prosecutors, career intelligence officials and most recently private-practice attorneys. Taken together, the actions appear designed not only to settle scores from years past but also to deter both government officials and private sector workers from participating in new inquiries into his conduct.
“This is an absolute honor to sign. What they've done is just terrible. It's weaponization — you could say weaponization against a political opponent, and it should never be allowed to happen again,” Trump said after being presented with the executive order at the Oval Office.
The executive order directs the attorney general, the director of national intelligence and other relevant agency heads to “take steps consistent with applicable law to suspend any active security clearances held by individuals at Perkins Coie, pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.” It does not say how many lawyers at the law firm which did not immediately respond to a written request for comment, might have such a clearance.
It also instructs agency heads to restrict access to government buildings by attorneys at the firm “when such access would threaten the national security of or otherwise be inconsistent with the interests of the United States" and to identify, and cancel, contracts they have with the firm.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the firm said: “We have reviewed the Executive Order. It is patently unlawful, and we intend to challenge it.”
The punishment arises from the hiring by Perkins Coie of Fusion GPS, a research and intelligence firm, to conduct opposition research on then-candidate Trump's potential ties to Russia. The arrangement was brokered by Marc Elias, who at the time was a well-connected partner at Perkins Coie and top lawyer for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign but who has since left the firm and started his own practice.
Fusion GPS in return retained former British spy Christopher Steele, whose dossier of research circulated among journalists and government officials in Washington during the campaign. The dossier, which was turned over to the FBI for its review, contended that Russia was engaged in a longstanding effort to aid Trump and had amassed compromising information about him.
But the material has since been largely discredited as containing salacious and unverified rumors linking Trump to Russia, with Special counsel John Durham's 2023 report on the origins of the FBI's Russia investigation saying that FBI investigators who tried to corroborate Steele's findings were unable to verify a "single substantive allegation." Steele has stood by his work.
The dossier created a political firestorm in January 2017, when it was revealed that then- FBI Director James Comey had briefed Trump before he took office on the existence of allegations from the research. The subsequent revelation that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee had helped fund the dossier added to questions about the legitimacy of Steele's research, which Trump as president repeatedly attacked as "phony" and inaccurate.
Trump and his allies have long tried to use the dossier's flaws to undermine the entire investigation into connections between his 2016 campaign and Russia. But the reality is that investigation began weeks before the FBI agents who were working on it came into possession of dossier and was opened based on an entirely different tip — that a Trump campaign aide claimed to have knowledge that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton, Trump's opponent, well before Russia was known to have hacked Democratic emails.
And though special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation did not conclude that Russia and the Trump campaign had criminally conspired to tip the election, it did identify a sweeping effort by the Kremlin to intervene on the Republican candidate's behalf as well as evidence that the campaign welcomed the help.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has fired Justice Department prosecutors who participated in special counsel Jack Smith's investigations into Trump. It also said it was stripping security clearances of lawyers who provided legal services for Smith and of dozens of former intelligence officials who signed onto a 2020 letter asserting that the Hunter Biden laptop saga bore the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.
The Perkins Coie executive order also alleges that the firm engages in what the Trump administration describes as unlawful diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
That follows a directive from Attorney General Pam Bondi last month that calls on the Justice Department’s civil rights division to “investigate, eliminate and penalize illegal” DEI “preferences, mandates, policies, programs and activities in the private sector and in educational institutions that receive federal funds.”
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Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.
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