Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day.
The government has decided to punish two prominent law firms because they represent parties that the administration does not like.
— William Bay, president of the American Bar Association, in a statement given to Reuters on President Donald Trump’s targeting of Covington & Burling and Perkins Coie based on clients they represented, noting further that clients should have the right to “access lawyers without government interference.” Per Professor Jon Michaels of the UCLA School of Law, Trump “swore up and down that he’d seek ‘retribution’ against his political opponents,” and he seems to have done so by suspending security clearances for lawyers at both Covington and Perkins Coie. As noted by Professor Claire Finkelstein of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, “By removing these security clearances, they have removed a piece of their livelihood, and they’ve done that without due process of law.”
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Threads, or connect with her on LinkedIn.
