President Donald Trump has claimed he is suing the biggest law firm to fight back against his sweeping attempts to do them harm.
Trump said in a Truth Social post Wednesday that he was “suing” Perkins Coie, a Democratic-tied firm, accusing it of “egregious and unlawful acts” just hours before a court hearing about an executive order he signed which target them.
The order banned Perkins Coie lawyers from entering federal buildings, which makes it impossible for them to work on cases involving security clearances and makes other cases difficult too. They were also banned from bidding for federal contracts.
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Other big law firms targeted by Trump had settled with his Department of Justice, offering free legal services for MAGA-friendly causes worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
But Perkins Coie stood up to Trump—and hired a different law firm, Williams & Connolly, to sue the government. His Truth Social rant also claimed his action was targeted at one specific, unnamed, lawyer at the firm.
In the same post, Trump also ranted at District Judge Beryl Howell. The Obama appointee is presiding over the case challenging his executive order and described Perkins Coie’s lawyers as “brave” for bringing the challenge against it.
The president blasted Howell for a “sick judicial temperament” and being a “highly biased and unfair disaster.”
“She ruled against me in the past, in a shocking display of sick judicial temperament, on a case that ended up working out very well for me, on appeal,” the president claimed in his post.
“Her ruling was so pathologically bad that it became the ‘talk of the town,’” he continued.
Lawyers for both Perkins Coie and another Trump target, law giant, WilmerHale were in court Wednesday in an effort to permanently block executive orders against them.
The two firms have argued that the orders are unconstitutional and should be dismissed without a trial, according to The New York Times.
Despite the post claiming Trump was suing, there was no evidence that he, or the Department of Justice, is doing so. The White House and Perkins Coie did not respond to requests for comment.
Last month, Howell rejected a Trump administration request that she recuse herself from the case over Trump’s executive order against the law firm.
“When the U.S. Department of Justice engages in this rhetorical strategy of ad hominem attack, the stakes become much larger than only the reputation of the targeted federal judge,” Howell wrote in her March 26 opinion.
“This strategy is designed to impugn the integrity of the federal judicial system and blame any loss on the decision-maker rather than fallacies in the substantive legal arguments presented,” she continued.
On Wednesday, the president accused Howell of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
“To put it nicely, Beryl Howell is an unmitigated train wreck. NO JUSTICE!!!,” Trump finished his post.
It is the latest in a series of attacks Trump has lobbed against federal judges assigned to cases challenging the president’s actions since the start of his second term.
Trump has also raged against District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg who was at the center of the fight over deportation flights.
The president took to social media last month to call for his impeachment and blast him as an Obama appointee. Boasberg was an Obama appointee but had previously been appointed to a lower rung in the judiciary by George W. Bush.
