Maggie Haberman Says ‘Trump Is Smiling’ As Law Firms That ‘Bent The Knee’ Face Lost Clients And Worse
CNN commentator and New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman told anchor Kaitlan Collins that President Donald Trump “is smiling” while he pushes law firms that “bent the knee” to comply with his demands as they face being “hurt” by the deals they cut.
The list of law firms that ran afoul of Trump in one way or another and have cut deals in order to avoid punishment has been steadily growing since Trump took office for his second term.
On Wednesday night’s edition of CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, Collins and Haberman discussed the “turmoil” those firms face as Trump’s demands fail to abate — and Trump delights in their situation:
COLLINS: Yes. It also says a lot that they fired the attorney at the Justice Department who–
HABERMAN: Yes, it does.
COLLINS: –was honest in court, and said it was a mistake, which the Solicitor General also later said to the Supreme Court.
But on this overall, you have been doing a lot of reporting on the deals that they have been cutting with law firms, to get hundreds of millions of dollars in pro bono legal work, which the President was talking about this, this week, in terms of what this would look like, that they could be working on things like tariffs and negotiating deals.
Do these legal firms, do they — did they get themselves into a situation, where they were not expecting what they now — the President expects them to do?
HABERMAN: Yes, they seem to think these law firms that they were going to be doing things. And they’re not all the same. And they’re not all–
COLLINS: Yes.
HABERMAN: They didn’t all get caught up in his crosshairs for the same reason.
COLLINS: Yes.
HABERMAN: In some cases, there were EEOC issues with them, and in other cases, it was who they employed.
In the case of Cadwalader, nobody could quite figure out what that was about. That was a firm that had employed Todd Blanche, now the Deputy Attorney General, and he left because they didn’t want to take Trump on as a client. And they had real reasons for not wanting Trump, who was notorious for wanting to not follow the advice he was given by lawyers, or for not paying his bills.
But regardless, these firms generally believed they could just get themselves out of his sights, if they did this. And in fact, he clearly is so happy with the success he has had, getting them all to bend the knee, that he is just going to keep pressing, and sees this as some kind of, at least in perpetuity, for the duration of his term.
And it’s not really clear when exactly he thinks the terms of these deals end. It’s not clear what would trigger non-compliance. It’s not clear what the penalty would be, if they didn’t comply. So there’s a lot of questions.
COLLINS: So they said, yes, and then thought maybe he would just forget that they promised $50 million in pro bono work, for example.
HABERMAN: Yes.
COLLINS: And then he comes up and says, Actually, I want you to do more and more.
I mean, they — this could actually still hurt them in the end.
HABERMAN: It could absolutely hurt them in the end. It could make other clients leave. It could make associates leave. It could make partners leave. And, in some cases, we’ve already seen that. So, these were bets they made, and we’ll see how they play out.
But the firms are now in turmoil, and Trump is smiling.
COLLINS: Maggie Haberman, great reporting, as always.
Watch above via CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins.
