By Mike Scarcella and David Thomas
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday that takes action against the law firm Jenner & Block, for what a White House official described as the company’s actions to weaponize the government and legal system.
“We’ve taken action against a number of law firms that have participated either in the weaponization of government, the weaponization of the legal system for political ends, or have otherwise engaged in illegal or inappropriate activities,” said White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf.
Jenner & Block did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the order, whose text was not immediately available.
The firm was formerly home to Andrew Weissmann, a top prosecutor involved in U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Weissmann was at Jenner from 2006 to 2011, and returned there in 2020 after serving on Mueller’s prosecution team.
Trump issued the new order less than a week after Wall Street law firm Paul Weiss made a deal with the president to escape an executive order that restricted its access to government buildings and officials and threatened federal contracts held by its clients.
Another large firm targeted by Trump, Perkins Coie, sued the administration earlier this month, alleging Trump’s actions were unconstitutional and had caused clients to abandon the firm.
A judge in Washington on March 12 temporarily blocked parts of the Perkins Coie order, finding the firm’s lawsuit was likely to succeed.
Trump on Friday directed the Justice Department to recommend similar moves against lawyers and law firms that handle immigration cases or that sued the government over the past eight years — a group that includes many of the largest U.S. firms.
(Reporting by Steve Holland, Nandita Bose and Mike Scarcella in Washington and David Thomas in Chicago; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, David Bario and Deepa Babington)
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