Arnold & Porter filings detail Brazil work as tariff dispute looms

By David Thomas and Mike Scarcella

Sept 18 (Reuters) - (Billable Hours is Reuters' weekly report on lawyers and money. Please send tips or suggestions to D.Thomas@thomsonreuters.com.)

Filings under the Foreign Agents Registration Act shed new light on Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer's representation of the Brazilian government, after the South American country hired the U.S. law firm last month ahead of a potential legal challenge to the Trump administration's tariffs.

The Brazilian Attorney General's Office expects to pay Arnold & Porter up to $3.542 million over the next 48 months for the work, the firm said in a FARA registration last week. The team for Brazil includes international finance partner Eli Whitney Debevoise II, who is a former U.S. executive director of the World Bank, and Gregory Harrington, head of the firm's sovereign finance practice, additional filings showed.

Arnold & Porter's disclosure said it is representing Brazil on matters related to "administrative sanctions and similar measures applied by the government of the United States."

Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad said last month that the country might sue in U.S. courts to challenge the steep tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on U.S. imports of Brazilian goods.

Law firms are not required under the foreign-agent law to register litigation work for a foreign country. But firms must register for any foreign lobbying work before U.S. federal agencies, or when a representation could involve a mix of lobbying and litigation.

Arnold & Porter's Debevoise declined to comment beyond the firm's public filings. A representative for the Brazilian Attorney General's Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.S. President Donald Trump in July imposed 50% tariffs on most Brazilian goods to fight what he has called a "witch hunt" against former President Jair Bolsonaro, but softened the blow by excluding sectors such as aircraft, energy and orange juice from heavier levies.

Bolsonaro last week was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison after being convicted of plotting a coup to remain in power after losing the 2022 election.

The U.S. Treasury Department has also sanctioned Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who presided over Bolsonaro's criminal case, accusing him of authorizing arbitrary pre-trial detentions and suppressing freedom of expression.

Arnold & Porter's representations of the Brazilian government and its central bank date back to 1981, according to FARA records. Other foreign clients the firm has represented under the foreign-agent law include Israel, Romania, Honduras and South Korea.

Among non-FARA work for foreign governments, Arnold & Porter's Debevoise was part of a team that struck a favorable settlement in 2021 on behalf of Panama in a $120 million international investment dispute. The firm has also represented Costa Rica, Peru, Chile and the Czech Republic in such disputes.

Arnold & Porter in recent months has filed several lawsuits on behalf of clients suing over immigration restrictions and other actions by the Trump administration. In one, the firm partnered with advocacy groups to sue over Trump's bid to end automatic birthright citizenship in the United States. The firm is also leading a case challenging the firing of Democratic members from a federal privacy and civil liberties board.

Arnold & Porter was one of the few large firms that signed onto court briefs backing legal challenges against the administration brought by law firms that were targeted by Trump in executive orders.

--Rudy Giuliani is on the hook for $1.36 million, plus interest, in unpaid legal fees he owes his former attorneys who represented him in connection with his actions as U.S. President Donald Trump's personal lawyer.

New York County Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron on Tuesday ruled in favor of law firm Davidoff Hutcher & Citron in a lawsuit it filed in 2023 against Giuliani seeking to collect fees for work performed for him between November 2019 and July 2023.

A spokesperson for Giuliani, Ted Goodman, said they would prevail on appeal. He said it "flies in the face of justice" that Engoron oversaw the case. Engoron in February 2024 ordered Trump to pay $454.2 million in penalties and interest for inflating his net worth to dupe lenders and insurers into giving him better terms.

A New York state appeals court last month threw out the $454 million penalty , but kept the fraud ruling intact.

--Trump turned to a familiar cadre of lawyers who have represented him in lawsuits against other media outlets for his new $15 billion defamation case against The New York Times and book publisher Penguin Random House.

Two of the lawyers who filed Trump's complaint Monday in Florida federal court, Edward Paltzik and Daniel Epstein, also spearheaded the president's lawsuit against CBS.

The third lawyer — Alejandro Brito, of Coral Gables, Florida-based Brito PLLC — is representing Trump in his ongoing lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over the newspaper's coverage of Trump's ties to disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Brito also represented Trump in his lawsuit against ABC News.

The lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump has intensified his legal attacks on the media during his second term.

ABC News and CBS parent company Paramount agreed to settle Trump's claims, with the companies agreeing to give more than $30 million to Trump's presidential library.

--Law firms Bartlit Beck and Kaplan Fox asked a federal judge in California to award them $85 million in legal fees for their work on a $700 million consumer settlement with Google over its app store practices.

Google agreed in the deal to pay $630 million into a consumer settlement fund and $70 million into another fund managed by U.S. states. The plaintiffs' filing said that no state plans to object to the $85 million fee request. Google Play store users will have a chance to object to any part of the settlement, including the fees.

The lead attorneys declined to comment about their fee request, and Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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