Tag Archives: White House

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Shameful: Trump’s Law Firm Deals Could Skirt Public Records Laws

President Donald Trump has pressured nine of the nation’s largest and most prestigious law firms to capitulate to demands that they provide nearly $1 billion in free, or pro bono, legal work to causes Trump supports.[1]

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said one of the firms, the Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP law firm (“Paul, Weiss”) agreed that:

  • Paul, Weiss will take on a wide range of pro bono matters that represent the full spectrum of political viewpoints of our society, whether “conservative” or “liberal.”
  • Paul, Weiss will dedicate the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services over the course of President Trump’s term to support the Administration’s initiatives, including: assisting our Nation’s veterans, fairness in the Justice System, the President’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and other mutually agreed projects.
  • Paul, Weiss affirms its unwavering commitment to these core ideals and principles, and will not deny representation to clients, including in pro bono matters and in support of non-profits, because of the personal political views of individual lawyers.  

Trump said in his Truth Social post that Paul, Weiss also “… acknowledged the wrongdoing of former Paul, Weiss partner, Mark Pomerantz”, who had worked as a prosecutor in Manhattan and had pushed for Mr. Trump to be charged criminally. A copy of the agreement provided to the media by Brad S. Karp, the chairman of Paul, Weiss, did not, however, include any mention of Pomerantz. The New York Times also reported that five people briefed on the matter said Mr. Karp said he did not criticize Mr. Pomerantz with the president, in spite of Mr. Trump’s assertion to the contrary.

In a particularly hypocritical move, Trump added to his Truth Social post, “Our Justice System is betrayed when it is misused to achieve political ends,” despite the fact that Paul, Weiss only agreed to Trump’s terms after he threatened the firm,

Initially, the compliant law firms are said to have agreed to the free legal work assuming it would be for such uncontroversial causes as helping veterans. But Trump, who has a habit of wandering into unexpected territory in his remarks, now appears to have a broader view of what the law firms may be pressured to work on. 

“Over the last week, he has suggested that the firms will be drafted into helping him negotiate trade deals,” the New York Times reported on April 16. “He has mused about having them help with his goal of reviving the coal industry. And he has hinted that he sees the promises of nearly $1 billion in pro bono legal services that he has extracted from the elite law firms…as a legal war chest to be used as he wishes. White House officials believe that some of the pro bono legal work could even be used toward representing Mr. Trump or his allies if they became ensnared in investigations.”

Whatever issues Trump chooses to rope the law firms into working on, what will the public know?

On one side, even though the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) applies to records created by federal agencies within the executive branch, the White House Office itself is exempt from FOIA. This means the public cannot directly request information from the White House Office[2] under FOIA. 

A FOIA memo from the U.S. Department of Justice on White House Records states:

“By its terms, the FOIA applies to “the Executive Office of the President,” 5 U.S.C. § 552(f), but this term does not include either “the President’s immediate personal staff” or any part of the Executive Office of the President “whose sole function is to advise and assist the President.”  Meyer v. Bush, 981 F.2d 1288, 1291 n.1 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (quoting H.R. Rep. No. 1380, 93d Cong., 2d Sess. 14 (1974)); see also, e.g., Soucie v. David, 448 F.2d 1067, 1075 (D.C. Cir. 1971). This means, among other things, that the parts of the Executive Office of the President that are known as the “White House Office” are not subject to the FOIA.”

Records originating with the Office of the Vice President or any of its component offices, are likewise not subject to the FOIA.

Similarly, the records of communications between the law firms and the White House or of work done by the law firms at Trump’s request would not be subject to the FOIA. 

So how will the public know what Trump’s White House and the law firms bending the knee to Trump are doing? It won’t. And how will Congress  know what Trump’s White House and the law firms are doing? It won’t. And how with the media know what Trump’s White House and the law firms are doing? Unless they are particularly aggressive, they won’t either.

The nearly $1 billion of pro bono work the nine law firms, and potentially more, will be doing for Trump could have a major impact on American life. And it looks like it can all be done in secret. 

Shameful. 

[1] The nine firms are Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Willkie Farr & Gallagher; Latham & Watkins; Milbank; Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft; A & O Shearman; Kirkland & Ellis; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.

 

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Like a Bad Penny, Former Portland Businessman Andrew Wiederhorn is Back in the News

Andrew Wiederhorn

Like a bad penny, Andrew Wiederhorn just keeps coming back. 

Wiederhorn, once a high-flying business star in Portland, ended up in federal prison for 14 months after being convicted of paying an illegal gratuity to a co-conspirator and filing a false tax return. 

After prison, Wiederhorn moved to Southern California and became the CEO of a publicly traded company, FAT Brands, Inc, that runs the hamburger chain Fatburger.

In May 2024, he re-emerged in the news when the federal government accused him of taking millions of dollars in bogus loans from companies he controlled — loans which were later forgiven. Over 11 years, the government said, Wiederhorn took bogus loans totaling $47 million for his personal benefit. That income, the government said, should have been reported to the IRS. The government argued he should have paid taxes on the money because it was income. 

Now he may have found a savior. The New York Times reported on Sunday, March 30, that on Friday, March 28, Adam Schleifer, a federal prosecutor working on Weiderhorn’s case, was sitting at his computer in Los Angeles when he received an email from a White House official, Saurabh Sharma, saying that he had been terminated. No reason was cited. 

“Given that the case has drawn headlines recently and that Mr. Wiederhorn has donated to political action committees supporting Mr. Trump, his colleagues suspected that may have played a role in his dismissal,” the New York Times reported. 

UPDATE – New York Times, July 29, 2025

The Justice Department moved Tuesday to end two high-profile criminal cases in Los Angeles whose handling by the Trump administration had been criticized by veteran prosecutors as alarming.

The moves by the leader of U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, Bill Essayli, came on the same day the administration said it would use a legally untested maneuver to ensure that Mr. Essayli remains in charge of the office beyond his interim appointment, which was set to expire Wednesday.

Mr. Essayli filed court papers asking a judge to dismiss pending criminal charges against Andrew Wiederhorn, the founder of Fatburger, who was fighting accusations of wire fraud and other crimes related to the company. While it is ultimately a judge’s decision whether to dismiss charges, a prosecutor’s request to do so makes it nearly impossible for the case to proceed to trial.

The move to end the Wiederhorn case comes months after White House officials fired the prosecutor in charge of it, Adam Schleifer, whom the right-wing influencer and close Trump ally Laura Loomer had publicly attacked on social media.

Mr. Schleifer’s dismissal unnerved Justice Department veterans, who could not recall any similar instance in which a White House staff member directly dismissed a lower-level career prosecutor. Along with Mr. Schleifer, the White House used the same method to fire a career prosecutor in Memphis.

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Obama’s community college plan: free is a very good price

“Free is a very good price,” Portland pitchman Tom Peterson used to say in ubiquitous advertisements for his retail stores.

Barack Obama must have been listening to Tom, based on his new proposal that community college be tuition-free for students who meet minimal standards.

“Community college should be free for those willing to work for it because, in America, a quality education should not be a privilege that is reserved for a few,” Obama said on Jan. 9.

Portland Community College registration.

Portland Community College registration.

Of course, despite the tendency of Democrats to define things paid for by the government as “free” and spending on favored programs as “investments”, Obama’s community college proposal won’t really be free. Federal taxes and state revenue will need to pay the bill, so either something else will have to be cut or taxes will have to be raised.

All the beneficiaries of Obama’s proposed junior college program would need to do is attend community college at least half-time, maintain a 2.5 GPA, and make steady progress toward completing their program. What a deal.

The Federal Government would cover three-quarters of the average cost of community college and the states would be expected to come up with the rest.

How much will it all cost? Who knows? The White House said the free-for-all program would help about 9 million students each year and that it would save a full-time community college student $3,800 in tuition per year on average. If all 9 million students go full-time, that would translate into a whopping annual cost of $34.2 billion, with $25.6 billion of that coming from the feds and $8.6 billion from the states.

And then there’d be the additional facilities and teachers community colleges would need pay for to accommodate the influx of free-for-all students? Who would pay for that?

Obama says he’ll include details on the federal costs in his January 20 State of the Union address and in his proposed budget.

Whatever number he comes up with, it’s likely to grow year after year because community college costs will grow, particularly with guaranteed federal money flowing in.

Another legitimate concern is grade inflation. As noted earlier, to get the free tuition students would need to maintain a 2.5 GPA. Anybody who thinks that community college instructors would not be inclined to inflate grades, and even be subtly pressed to do so, to keep the money coming is naive.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the completion rate at 2-year degree-granting institutions is pretty abysmal. Just 31 percent of first-time, full-time undergraduate students who began their pursuit of a certificate or associate’s degree in fall 2009 attained it within 150 percent of the normal time required to do so, or within 3 years for a 2-year degree. The graduation rate was just 20 percent at public 2-year institutions.

Obama’s plan seems to assume that the main thing holding students back from satisfactorily completing coursework at community colleges is the cost, particularly of tuition. But many other factors are likely to be determinative, including poor K-12 preparation for a significant number of students and the need for remedial courses that many students can’t successfully complete. Making community college free for everybody won’t solve these problems.

In fact, without any skin in the game, students may be even less motivated to complete their studies.

Another glaring weakness of Obama’s proposal is the absence of any income qualifications for the tuition aid. Presumably the executive’s son and the gas station attendant’s daughter would both be equally eligible for the giveaway. At a time of severe budget constraints, what’s the point of that?

But why worry about the details. It’ll be free.