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kamala harris
'Absolutely Shameful': Critics Slam Latest Law Firm to Cave Amid Trump's Revenge Threats
Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP—where former Vice President Kamala Harris' husband is a partner—investigated the Capitol insurrection and successfully represented Georgia election workers defamed by Rudy Giuliani.
Apr 01, 2025
In the latest capitulation to his retributive attacks on Big Law, U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that his administration struck a deal with a law firm that took part in the investigation into the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection and whose partners include the husband of former Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
"Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP proactively reached out to President Trump and his Administration, offering their decisive commitment to ending the Weaponization of the Justice System and the Legal Profession," Trump said on his Truth Social network. "The President is delivering on his promises of eradicating Partisan Lawfare in America, and restoring Liberty and Justice FOR ALL."
According to Trump, Willkie—whose partners include former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff—will provide a total of at least $100 million in pro bono services to veterans, active duty U.S.en troops, and Gold Star families; law enforcement and first responders; to "ensuring fairness in our justice system;" and combating antisemitism.
The firm also agreed to commit to "merit-based hiring" and refrain from "illegal" diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring, promotion, and retention. It must also "not deny representation to clients, such as members of politically disenfranchised groups... who have not historically received legal representation from major national law firms... because of the personal political views of individual lawyers."
Willkie said in a statement that "we reached an agreement with President Trump and his administration on matters of great importance to our firm. The substance of that agreement is consistent with our firm's views on access to legal representation by clients, including pro bono clients, our commitment to complying with the law as it relates to our employment practices, and our history of working with clients across a wide spectrum of political viewpoints."
"The firm looks forward to having a constructive relationship with the Trump administration, and remains committed to serving the needs of our clients, our employees, and the communities of which we are a part," the statement added.
The agreement averts what could have been a ruinous executive order from Trump targeting the firm. Willkie drew Trump's ire for actions including employing a top investigator for the House committee that examined his role in fomenting the attack on the U.S. Capitol and for representing two Georgia election workers who sued his former attorney and adviser, Rudy Giuliani, for defamation. In December 2023, the former New York City mayor was ordered to pay $148 million to the workers for falsely accusing them of engaging in a nonexistent conspiracy to "steal" the 2020 U.S. presidential election from Trump.
According toThe Associated Press, "Emhoff made it known internally that he disagreed with this deal and told firm leadership they should fight, according to a person familiar with the situation who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations."
Tuesday's deal outraged democracy defenders.
Absolutely shameful. Doug Emhoff of all people should understand the danger that will come from lawyers capitulating to a man hell-bent on destroying our democracy. Emhoff and other partners need to show they stand on the side of the rule of law by quitting—there’s absolutely no other option.
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— Molly Coleman ( @mollycoleman.bsky.social) April 1, 2025 at 2:19 PM
"Emhoff and other partners need to show they stand on the side of the rule of law by quitting—there's absolutely no other option," argued Molly Coleman, executive director of the People's Parity Project and PPP Action and a St. Paul, Minnesota City Council candidate.
The Willkie agreement follows
similar surrenders by white-shoe law firms including Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Trump accused these and other law firms of weaponizing the judicial system, and last month, he issued a memo directing U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to "seek sanctions" against firms and lawyers that the administration says have engaged in "frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States."
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The Worst Political Decision Since Nixon Taped Himself Committing Crimes
How the Democrats handed Trump the election on a bitcoin-plated platter—and most still don't think they did anything wrong.
Apr 01, 2025
Each day the Democrats are outraged about another outrage coming from Trump and his enablers—stomping on immigrants, undermining the courts, attacking Canada, claiming Ukraine started the war, violating campus free speech, destroying the EPA, firing forest rangers—and on and on and on.
But why the surprise? Did anyone doubt that Trump would act on his anger and his resentment, and then follow through executing the detailed plans laid out in Project 2025? Did anyone believe he would turn the other cheek at those who tried to impeach him and send him to jail? Surely every single elected Democrat knew that Trump’s election would be a disaster for everything the party claimed to stand for.
Nevertheless, the Democrats handed Trump the election on a bitcoin-plated platter. They stuck with Biden—make that sucked up to Biden—until it was too late to run primaries and find the strongest Democratic candidate. (I’m not saying Kamala Harris necessarily was the weakest one, but four years earlier she flunked out before the first presidential primary. Just saying.)
Why the hell did they do that?
I’m no political genius, but nearing Biden’s 81st birthday, in November of 2023, I begged him not to run again. It was clear to me, based on polling, his lack of energy, and my own intuition, that he had no business running again.
I was alone, but not entirely so. Obama’s campaign maestro, David Axelrod was pounded for suggesting Biden wasn’t the best candidate. That so successfully quelled any dissent that it wasn’t until six months later (July 2, 2024) that Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) became the first sitting Democratic congressman to ask Biden to withdraw. Profiles in courage, the Democrats were not, including all the governors lining up for 2028.
If I could see the trainwreck coming why couldn’t the Democrats?
I think I know why. They didn’t get upset about it because they were blinded by power and wealth.
Biden represented power. You cross him and you lose access to that power even while his grip on reality is diminishing. You become a target for party loyalists, and risk losing credibility in the party if you call for him to step down. You become an outsider. Even Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) didn’t want to lose their influence over Biden’s pro-worker agenda as they continued to support his candidacy until the bitter end.
The Democrats today are imploding, and that’s exactly what they deserve. They blew it.
The attraction to wealth is an even bigger problem. Far too many Democrats are enamored by the rich and famous. They went to school with them. They lean on them for campaign funds. They plan to join them when they leave public office. The wizards on Wall Street and in corporate America form the class they see themselves as part of, or in the class they aspire to.
It is not a coincidence, therefore, that the Democratic Party has become the representatives of the managerial class. Too many party members with working-class roots tore them out long ago.
Many probably discounted their worries about Trump, thinking that the rich and powerful would tame him. Because that’s where the Democratic Party thinks real power lies. The financial class wouldn’t let Trump wreck the economy, would it? Surely, the corporate class wouldn’t back down on DEI programs or forgo their access to inexpensive immigrant labor. The wealthiest Democratic law firms aren’t going to cave, right? Wouldn’t the elites prevent Trump’s excesses the way they did last time? Hmmm.
Along the way, most Democrats lost their anger. They lost their fight. They lost their connection to the working people who have seen their way of life crushed after 40 years of neoliberalism. Which is why many modern Democrats found it easy to cavalierly go along with the worst political decision since Nixon taped himself committing crimes during the Watergate scandal. (Please see Wall Street’s War on Workers for why working people abandoned the Democrats, and visa vera.)
Along the way, most Democrats lost their anger. They lost their fight. They lost their connection to the working people who have seen their way of life crushed after 40 years of neoliberalism.
Biden clearly did not have the capacity to run again. The Democrats knew that even before he proved it to the world during his disastrous June 2024 debate with Trump. But they didn’t care enough to oppose his decision, publicly, where it would matter. He told his advisors during the 2020 race that he wouldn’t run for a second term, he would be 82 years old by his second inauguration, but the party refused to hold him to it when he changed his mind.
The Democrats today are imploding, and that’s exactly what they deserve. They blew it. They can’t be reformed into a working-class party, because that’s not who they are or what they want to be. From my perspective, reforming them is an utter waste of time and energy, an exercise in window dressing and spin. Instead, we need a new party, an Independence Party that comes with the slogan: The billionaires have two parties, we need one of our own!
Stop with the Spoiler Argument
All I hear from friend and foe is that third parties are impossible in America, that they only serve as spoilers and can never succeed.
Ralph Nader’s run, they tell me, elected Bush. We can argue about whether that’s true, it might be, but there’s very little argument against the idea that Biden’s run in 2024 elected Trump—for the second time!
So, we start with identifiable targets. There is nothing to spoil if we concentrate on running independent working-class candidates in one-party Congressional districts of which there are many!
In 2022, five out of every six races were decided by more than 10 percentage points, according to FairVote.org. One out of every 13 races went entirely uncontested! These districts are where the battle should be joined. The call for a new Independence Party is a call for a vibrant second party, not a third!
Dan Osborn, a former local labor leader, was surprisingly competitive in the 2024 Senate race in Nebraska, running against an unopposed Republican and far ahead of Kamala Harris. Bernie Sanders always runs as an independent as well, and he has now come out urging others to do the same.
The need for a new party could never be clearer. The time could never be more urgent.
There’s a hunger out there for something new, but it will take courage and guts to create it. That can only happen when key labor unions decide to do what their membership has been telling them to do for a generation – get away from the corporate Democrats!
Private sector unions, diminished as they may be, are still the seat of worker power in the U.S. And they can galvanize the working class around an agenda that enhances the well-being of all working people. They are key to building a new political formation that protects us all from Wall Street-driven job destruction.
The need for a new party could never be clearer. The time could never be more urgent. The opportunity is there staring us in the face, if only we have the nerve to grab it.
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FEC Rejects Trump Campaign's Allegations of Washington Post Bias
The commission voted 4-0 to dismiss the complaint against the newspaper owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos—who donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration and cracked down on criticism of the president at the paper.
Mar 27, 2025
The Federal Election Commission on Thursday issued a unanimous decision dismissing a complaint by U.S. President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign accusing The Washington Post of "illegal corporate in-kind contributions" to then-Vice President Kamala Harris' failed Democratic presidential campaign.
The campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets.org reported that the FEC commissioners voted 4-0 to reject the Trump team's allegation that the Post bought social media ads in a bid to boost news articles critical of the Republican nominee.
Lawyers for the Post—which is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, who donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration and sat with fellow oligarchs Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg at the January swearing-in, and who has cracked down on criticism of the president and his Cabinet at the paper—called the Trump campaign's allegations "speculative and demonstrably false."
As OpenSecrets.org's Dave Levinthal wrote:
Trump's campaign had alleged that The Washington Post was conducting a "dark money corporate campaign in opposition to President Donald J. Trump" and used "its own online advertising efforts to promote Kamala Harris' presidential candidacy... Trump's campaign also argued that the Post was not entitled to what's known as a "press exemption" for political content because it was "not functioning within the scope of a legitimate press entity."
The FEC general counsel's office disagreed and advised the commissioners to dismiss the complaint based on "an internal 'scoring criteria' for agency resources," Levinthal explained, adding that "the Post 'appears to have been acting within its legitimate press function and thus its activities are protected' by federal election laws' exemption for overtly journalistic activities."
"Given that low rating and the apparent applicability of the press exemption, we recommend that the commission dismiss the complaint, consistent with the commission's prosecutorial discretion to determine the proper ordering of its priorities and use of agency resources," the office advised.
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