U.S. President Donald Trump gestures at the annual National Memorial Day Observance in the Memorial Amphitheater, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., May 26, 2025.
Ken Cedeno | Reuters
A federal judge on Tuesday angrily tore into President Donald Trump‘s executive order targeting the top law firm WilmerHale as he struck down the entire order as unconstitutional.
“The cornerstone of the American system of justice is an independent judiciary and an independent bar willing to tackle unpopular cases, however daunting,” wrote Judge Richard Leon in the scathing, exclamation-point-filled opinion in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
“The Founding Fathers knew this!” Leon wrote, adding that to let Trump’s order stand “would be unfaithful to the judgment and vision of the Founding Fathers!”
The judge, who was appointed to the federal bench by former President George W. Bush, suffused his 73-page order with a tone of open indignation rarely seen in judicial pronouncements.
“Please—that dog won’t hunt!” Leon wrote in response to arguments from the Trump administration that the law firm’s claims of harm resulting from the executive order were speculation.
“This argument is absurd!” the judge later wrote, balking at the administration’s attempt to dispute whether Trump’s order caused WilmerHale to lose clients.
Since becoming president a second time, Trump has issued a laundry list of presidential orders and memos targeting law firms that have either worked on cases against him or hired his political foes.
Trump’s order targeting WilmerHale explicitly criticized the firm for hiring Robert Mueller, who served as Department of Justice special counsel to oversee a probe of possible coordination between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The president ordered the U.S. attorney general to suspend security clearances for the firm’s lawyers and commanded federal agency heads to terminate WilmerHale’s government contracts. Trump’s order also barred WilmerHale employees from accessing U.S. government buildings and imposed a federal hiring freeze on the firm.
“The Court’s decision to permanently block the unlawful executive order in its entirety strongly affirms our foundational constitutional rights and those of our clients,” WilmerHale said in a statement after Leon’s ruling. “We remain proud to defend our firm, our people, and our clients.”
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