Trump Fights Paul Weiss as Wall Street Seeks President’s Ear

President Donald Trump is moving against a top Wall Street law firm as his improving relationship with banks and hedge funds hits a critical juncture.

Trump targeted Paul Weiss in a Friday order directing federal agencies to scrap contracts with companies who are the firm’s clients and suspend lawyers’ security clearances. It follows similar moves against law firms Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling.

In Paul Weiss, Trump is taking on a powerful firm whose 150-year history is closely tied to its work for leading financial institutions like Citibank, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Goldman Sachs, as well hedge fund giants Apollo Global Management and Blackstone Group. Corporate leaders are trying to stay off Trump’s enemies list—and in his ear—as some sound alarms about the president’s tariff war sinking the economy.

“The client base is so much broader and it’s not particularly government contracts,” Alisa Levin, a legal recruiter, said of the order against Paul Weiss. “It does take on a far more chilling effect.”

Apollo is a major Paul Weiss client that has helped transform the firm from an elite litigation shop into a deals powerhouse. Marc Rowan, Apollo’s co-founder and chief executive, was on a short list for Treasury Secretary after Trump’s election. Rowan and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who was said to be considered for the same position, have informally advised the president on economic issues. Blackstone boss Steve Schwarzman was an early Trump backer whose support for the president signaled a shifting tide.

Dimon and BlackRock’s Larry Fink, who tapped Paul Weiss for an internal investigation in 2021, recently have criticized Trump’s tariff policy for stoking uncertainty and weakening the economy. Trump attempted to quell some of those concerns last week in a meeting with top CEOs and Wall Street executives.

The legal industry has been largely quiet in response to the president’s moves against Paul Weiss and the other firms, who Trump accuses of using the courts to wage political fights against him. He singled out Paul Weiss for its ties to Mark Pomerantz, former partner who led a Manhattan district attorney’s investigation of Trump, and pro bono work on a lawsuit against right-wing groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

It remains to be seen if Trump’s decision to target a third major law firm is a galvanizing moment for the rest of the legal industry. “Now it’s a pattern. It’s an industry problem,” said Janet Stanton, a partner at law firm consultancy Adam Smith, Esq.

The president’s allies in Washington are hailing the moves, even after a federal judge blocked the order against Perkins Coie.

“These law firms, in my view, were trying to disrupt and take down the Republican nominee for president,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in a Sunday CBS interview. “If these people involved pay a price, they got nobody but themselves to blame.”

Pro Bono Fight

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison is a preeminent litigation firm whose roster has included the likes of Ted Wells, Beth Wilkinson, Roberta Kaplan, former US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and former US Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. Brad Karp, the firm’s chair, helped usher major banks through the 2008 recession and subsequent court fights.

Paul Weiss climbed the ranks of the country’s most profitable firms by building out its corporate department and steering deals for Apollo, Chevron Corp., and International Business Machines Corp., among others.

The firm’s pro bono work goes back to Brown v. Board of Education, working with then-head of the NAACP and former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall on the landmark 1954 civil rights case. Paul Weiss lawyers also represented Edith Windsor in an important LGBT rights case overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, pushed for voting rights, and represented victims of anti-Asian hate.

Trump’s executive order calls out the firm’s work on a suit related to the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol. The suit, brought in Dec. 2021 by DC Attorney General Karl Racine, was the first action against the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers over the attack. Paul Weiss partner Jeannie Rhee, who worked on Special Counsel Robert Muller’s investigation into claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election, signed onto the suit.

DC’s new attorney general earlier this month dropped the suit, stating that government no longer believes the case is worth pursuing.

Paul Weiss in May 2024 launched the Center to Combat Hate, headed by litigators Daniel Kramer and Karen Dunn, to partner with civil rights organizations to “foster a more just and equitable society.” Some references to the center appear to have been scrubbed from the firm’s website, and a separate site touting its work is no longer live.

Trump’s executive orders have targeted firms with deep ties to the Democratic Party. Dunn and Eric Holder, the Obama attorney general and Covington partner, worked on Kamala Harris’ White House campaign. Democrat elections lawyer Marc Elias led Perkins Coie’s political practice before launching his own boutique. Trump called Elias and Pomerantz “radicals” who attempted to keep him out of the White House in a Justice Department speech last week.

Karp, the Paul Weiss chief, was an active bundler for the Harris campaign. He also gave more than $261,000 to Democratic groups between January 2023 and December 2024, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The partnership spans the political spectrum. Andrew Rosenberg, co-chair of the firm’s restructuring department, gave more than $433,000 to GOP groups between January 2023 and December 2024, records show.

‘A Prayer of Collective Action’

Paul Weiss is likely to have a strong case challenging the order after a federal judge sided with Perkins Coie in its challenge to Trump’s order against the firm.

But Perkins Coie’s experience underscores the threat, even if the order doesn’t hold up in court. The firm said it lost significant business from longtime clients wary of drawing the president’s ire in less than a week after the order was issued.

At least one Paul Weiss client is sticking with the firm.

“Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrisson is an incredible firm, and proud to be a client,” SKIMS general counsel Colin Bennett said in a LinkedIn post the day after the order was issued. “None of this is OK.”

The move against Paul Weiss could nudge other firms off the sidelines.

“Before, other law firm leaders could say, ‘well it’s not me,’” Bruce MacEwen, also of Adam Smith, said. Now, clients who jump ship may move to another firm that also winds up on Trump’s target list. “That is the reason that there may be a prayer of collective action,” MacEwen said.

Law firms are delicate organizations, built upon a network of partners and their client connections. Partners can easily move from one firm to another, taking their books of business and impacting a firm’s bottom line and creating a spiral of exits.

Trump’s order is “brilliantly diabolical,” Stanton said, because clients and lawyers are “completely mobile.” Whether it works “will depend on people doing nothing and the industry doing nothing,” she said.