A federal judge ruled Friday that President Trump’s executive order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie is unconstitutional. A progressive judge permanently blocked the administration from enforcing it. The Order sought to strip the firm of its security clearances.
Control over security clearances is a vested power in the executive branch. If the president decides he doesn’t want a law firm that literally targeted him on behalf of Hillary Clinton to have access to classified materials within his administration, he should be able to do it.
Perkins Coie was behind Hillary Clinton’s dirty dossier and endless lawsuits to overturn elections or corrupt them by loosening the rules. They were tied to the Alfa Bank hoax attacking Donald Trump. One of their lawyers directs the 65 Project, which menaces any lawyer helping people they don’t like. Judges didn’t care about any of it.
Judge Howell decided it was against the law.
In a 102-page decision, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled in favor of the firm and said Mr. Trump’s directive that sought to punish it sent the message that “lawyers must stick to the party line, or else.”
“Using the powers of the federal government to target lawyers for their representation of clients and avowed progressive employment policies in an overt attempt to suppress and punish certain viewpoints, however, is contrary to the Constitution, which requires that the government respond to dissenting or unpopular speech or ideas with ‘tolerance, not coercion,'” Howell wrote.
She found that the executive order violates the First, Fifth, and Sixth amendments to the Constitution.
The decision from Howell, who sits on the U.S. district court in Washington, D.C., is the first summary ruling in one of four cases brought by law firms that have been penalized by the president as a result of their associations with people who attacked him with lawfare. In addition to Perkins Coie, the firms Jenner & Block, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, and Susman Godfrey have also filed lawsuits challenging their respective executive orders.
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