A Trump Memo Threatens Any Lawyer Who Dares to Sue His Illegal Executive Actions

Mar 23, 2025

Donald Trump’s attempts to target specific law firms associated with the political opposition has widened into a threat against literally any lawyer who brings a case against the U.S. government, as directed in a memo sent by the White House to the Department of Justice.

The Washington Post reports:

A White House memo issued late Friday night orders Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem to pursue ethics challenges against lawyers who they accuse of bringing meritless cases or making arguments that are not backed up by fact, including in immigration courts.
The memo told Bondi to consider taking actions against law firm partners for perceived misconduct by junior attorneys and to review cases against the government from the past eight years to look for “misconduct that may warrant additional action.”
The directive comes as the Trump administration faces more than 130 lawsuits over its efforts to dismantle agencies and diversity programs, freeze spending, fire federal workers and deport immigrants without due process. …
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, who has led several lawsuits against the Trump administration and joined with a coalition of state attorneys general in other cases, called the memo “an unprecedented and frankly outrageous attempt to threaten lawyers simply for doing their jobs.”

Given the administration’s recent losing record in the courts, we have wondered what would happen if Trump’s own DOJ were held accountable for “arguments that are not backed up by fact.” But this is clearly a plan to intimidate and harass any lawyer who dares to argue against the federal government.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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