The Washington Lawyers Who Suddenly Love Trump – WSJ

Top law firms have talented attorneys and no shortage of institutional knowledge about how the bureaucratic machinery works in the abstract. Yet they are hardly chock full of partners with high-level experience serving in the first Trump administration. This is in contrast with prominent liberal attorneys, who travel through a well-oiled revolving door between Democratic administrations and the private sector. Many firms shut that door to Republicans four years ago, depriving themselves of lawyers who worked in Mr. Trump s first administration, alongside many who will return for the second.

Practitioners in some specialties, such as trade and antitrust, managed to avoid the cordon sanitaire that elite firms placed around Trump lawyers. Talk to many attorneys who served the president, however, and they will tell you that the message from most firms was clear: Republicans need not apply. The one firm for which that wasn t the case, Jones Day, had a book-length hit job published against it in 2022: Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice. As Jones Day s internal deliberations were leaked in the press, there was a noticeable lack of outrage from the firm s peers as if they would never be subjected to such treatment.

The same legal elite that refused to work with the previous Trump administration are now alerting the press that they have the necessary expertise to work with the next Trump administration. Lawyers are nothing if not bold.

via www.wsj.com

Make of this what you will. You can’t blame lawyers anymore than you can blame the wasps drawn irresistibly to your picnic lunch. Of course, I do blame the wasps — vile creatures.