Bondi ally leads defense of Trump orders against law firms

By Mike Scarcella

April 9 (Reuters) - The job of defending President Donald Trump's executive orders targeting law firms has fallen on a longtime ally of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi who joined the Justice Department earlier this year.

It's been a difficult early assignment so far for Richard Lawson, who faced back-to-back grillings late last month from two federal judges in Washington overseeing lawsuits that Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr and Jenner & Block filed to contest the orders.

Judges in both cases swiftly blocked key provisions in the orders, and echoed the concerns of a third judge who halted parts of the order issued against law firm Perkins Coie.

Lawson in a pair of filings on Tuesday asked the judges to dismiss the Jenner and WilmerHale cases. He said the cases were based on "conjecture and speculation" and that they intruded on the power of the presidency.

Jenner & Block and WilmerHale the same day asked U.S. judges to permanently bar the executive orders issued against them. A similar request from Perkins Coie is pending.

Lawson, now a deputy associate attorney general, and the Justice Department had no immediate comment.

Trump's orders against all three firms suspended security clearances for their lawyers and restricted their access to government buildings, officials and federal contracting work.

The orders targeted the firms over hiring practices that Trump claimed were discriminatory against white people, and over his perceived grievance that attorneys linked to the firms have personally done him wrong.

FLORIDA TIES

As a lawyer in private practice, Lawson was on a team representing Trump in lawsuits against major technology platforms, two of which settled this year for millions of dollars.

He led a consumer protection team under Bondi's leadership of the Florida attorney general's office. More recently, they worked together at the conservative nonprofit America First Policy Institute's litigation center, which has said it is focused on "the radical Left and its weaponization of government through the courts."

Lawson in 2016 was hired at law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips as a partner, and worked there for at least a few years. Los Angeles-founded Manatt was one of 504 law firms that signed a court brief last week denouncing Trump’s attacks on law firms as an effort “to cow every other firm, large and small, into submission.”

Democratic state attorneys general, dozens of former general counsels at large companies and others have denounced Trump's attacks on law firms, calling them retaliatory efforts to frighten firms from taking clients the president disfavors.

Judges so far have also expressed alarm at Trump's orders, as well as frustration at the Justice Department's arguments defending them.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in the lawsuit that WilmerHale brought against Trump told Lawson to use his “common sense,” after he said he could not assess whether a prospective law firm client might be concerned that its lawyers could be unable to access a federal courthouse.

U.S. District Judge John Bates at a hearing on the same day asked if lawyers from Jenner could be denied access to federal courthouses.

Lawson said he did not know the “formal structure” of the order and urged the judge to delay any ruling.

“Well, that's a problem. It would be nice if the executive order, and you speaking for it, knew what it applied to,” Bates said.

Bondi in a memo to federal agencies that was disclosed on Tuesday blasted the temporary restraining order Jenner won in the case, which she said came from an "unelected district judge."

Still, she said in her memo she was complying with an order from Bates to tell agencies about his ruling.

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