Other elite #law firms have been hit w/similar sanctions, leaving them to choose whether to fight the orders or cut a *deal* w/ #Trump to remove the restrictions, even as a judge has already blocked one of the orders because it is likely to be unlawful.
The order said Trump was in part punishing #WilmerHale for the firm’s connections to #Mueller, who led an inquiry that the order described as “one of the most partisan investigations in American history.”
#Trump Targets #WilmerHale, Citing #LawFirm’s Connection to #RobertMueller
#Mueller, who worked at WilmerHale before retiring in 2021, had investigated the Trump campaign’s ties to #Russia during Trump’s first term.
#law #RevengePolitics #authoritarianism #autocracy #tyranny #MafiaState #TheRealWeaponizationOfGovernment
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/us/politics/trump-wilmerhale-law-firm-mueller.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=p&pvid=EB968B02-59E6-44C9-B0A7-4057762D4A42
But even the facts #Mueller was able to produce, despite noncooperation from #Trump’s top lieutenants, were astonishing. #Putin dangled a Moscow building deal in front of the #TrumpOrganization worth hundreds of millions of dollars, & Trump lied about it, giving Putin leverage over him. Trump’s campaign chair, #PaulManafort, was in business w/a Russian #intelligence officer.
#Trump was not explaining why a deal w/ #Russia would advance #America’s interests, or why honoring it would advance Russia’s. He was defending Russia’s integrity by vouching for #Putin’s character.
In recent yrs, the kinship between Trump & Putin has become somewhat unfashionable to point out. After #Mueller disappointed liberals by failing to prove a #criminal #conspiracy btwn the Trump campaign & Russia, conventional wisdom on much of the center & left…came to treat the scandal as overblown.
On December 5, right-wing culture warriors instructed lawmakers attending the
American Legislative Exchange Council’s ( #ALEC )
"States and Nation Policy Summit"
in Washington, D.C.,
on the steps their states can take to upend policies and practices
designed to help address the unfolding climate emergency and diversify workforces.
CRC Advisors Senior Vice President 
#Mike #Thompson led the workshop
“Battles Won, War Continues:
The Left, ESG and State Policy,”
according to materials obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).
In 2020, #Greg #Mueller and #Leonard #Leo, who played an integral role in Trump’s effort to pack the federal judiciary with right-wing judges,
founded CRC Advisors
— the group Thompson represents
— to “funnel big money and expertise across the conservative movement.”
Although not as well known as Leo,
Thompson, a member of ALEC’s private sector advisory board,
is an important Christian Right operative
who plays multiple leadership roles in campaigns and communications.
Thompson’s public relations skills were on full display in his remarks
demonizing the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ),
“a global coalition of leading financial institutions committed to accelerating the decarbonization of the economy”
in order to preserve the planet from further destruction.
Thompson argued that large asset managers and banks that participate in GFANZ
— including BlackRock, State Street, Wells Fargo, City Bank, Morgan Stanley, Chase, and Bank of America
— are breaking antitrust law by utilizing sustainable investment strategies.
Thompson provided an example of a lawsuit against BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard
filed last month by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and 10 other Republican attorneys general
— all active members of the fossil-fuel backed "Republican Attorneys General Association" ( #RAGA )
— alleging that the three companies violated antitrust law in colluding to raise electricity prices through their investments.
“The states have filed an antitrust lawsuit and they detail in it all of the evidence where those three companies were colluding to keep coal in the ground and from coming to market,
thus, driving up the price and violating antitrust law,”
Thompson told workshop participants.
The PR professional neglected to mention that CRC Advisors is a paid consultant of RAGA
or that his boss Leo’s "Concord Fund" has funneled $3.5 million to the pay-to-play group this year
and $20.3 million since the organization was founded in 2014, according to CMD’s analysis of its tax filings.
#Sal #Nuzzo, the first workshop presenter, is executive director of
"Consumers Defense",
the sister organization of Consumers’ Research,
which is a vice-chairman sponsor of ALEC’s summit and a driver of the right-wing’s manufactured crisis around “woke” capitalism.
Nuzzo argued that reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050 through renewable energy production would force Americans to cede
“two-thirds of [the] U.S. electricity generation supply chain to the Communist Party of China.”
He didn’t cite a source for this claim, nor does the group’s website provide any research substantiating it.
Nuzzo also attempted to raise the alarm with lawmakers from states that depend on agriculture
by claiming that the Left has “shifted their attacks and tactics into the agriculture space”
in response to anti-ESG legislation passed over the last three legislative cycles
and has moved to prevent farmers from getting access to loans.
“The [Left’s] coordinated attacks on agriculture are occurring at all levels.
They’re at the producer level.
They’re at the distributor level.
They’re at the consumption and sales level,”
Nuzzo claimed.
“If farming interests cannot get financing, [farmers] cannot operate.”
#Paul #Watkins, founder of "Fusion Law" and both a senior legal fellow at "Consumers’ Research"
and a special counsel with "Heritage Action", made a number of claims in his presentation
based on his belief that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are discriminatory,
and therefore illegal.
As a member of ALEC’s "Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force", he is involved in drafting and voting on most of the group’s pro-fossil fuel policies alongside lawmakers and polluting industry lobbyists.
https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2024/12/07/top-leonard-leo-lieutenant-leads-alec-bootcamp-against-woke-capitalism
>> … trump is compromised.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/11/12/russia-attempts-to-collect-its-winnings/
#Russia is trying to collect while it still can, and could still sink #Trump, at least until inauguration.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/08/02/lawfare-missing-the-kompromat-for-the-pee-glee/
Trump’s behavior at the #Helsinki summit reflects lashing from Putin after Rod #Rosenstein slyly alerted Putin that #Mueller knew certain things that Trump wouldn’t fully understand.
Putin has receipts.
Mueller hinted he knew what some of them are.
@emptywheel @tobie1 @KathyLK @davetroy
>> By "Garland" you mean, "holy hell I couldn't figure out how to spell Jeffrey Rosen."
No, I really meant #Garland, as in #MerrickGarland (R), appointed by #JoeBiden (D) as US Attorney General in 2021 after #Trump was evicted by the People, and per OLC memo, became eligible for prosecution of potential crimes that #Mueller was neither able to exonerate Trump of nor prosecute him for when Bill Barr & Jeffrey Rosen were in charge
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/where-justice-department-trump-obstruction-offenses
@tobie1 @KathyLK @davetroy @emptywheel
>> …start from the bottom and work your way up. And that is what's apparently happened in the Jan 6 investigation, which is why there's a case pending in Judge Chutkan's court.
The case in Judge #Chutkan's court is for the TOP.
In a bottoms-up, collaborators in Congress would come before #Trump.
>> Do you really believe Jack Smith started from scratch rather than inherited an investigation?
He only inherited #Mueller investigation & let evidence rot
@tobie1 @KathyLK @davetroy @emptywheel
>> Garland even let SS texts re Trump/Pence get Epsteined instead of impounding the exec dept property 
#Garland also let #Mueller evidence rot and expire instead of prosecuting #Trump for crimes that Mueller had not "exonerated" him for.
Not sure when Garland started J6 investigation but it seems like #J6Committee "jolted" him into action.
Least he could've done is immediately impound SS texts which as Exec branch property didn't require subpoenas.
#Leonard #Leo’s status as the world’s third most powerful figure soon made him a rich man.
During his time at the Federalist Society,
he had hardly been a pauper,
bringing in around $400,000 a year.
But with six children attending The Heights and Oakcrest, the two Opus Dei schools that charged up to $30,000 tuition annually per student,
and a burgeoning taste for good food and expensive wines,
it didn’t take long to burn through his salary.
But his life had taken a lavish turn after Trump’s victory
and his appointment as an unpaid advisor to the president on judicial appointments.
The dramatic uptick in his personal fortune dovetailed with his joining a for-profit entity called "CRC Advisors", alongside another CIC board member #Greg #Mueller.
Mueller had spearheaded the "National Organization for Marriage" vitriolic public relations strategy,
and #CRC quickly established itself as the go-to advisory firm for the dark-money network of nonprofit entities that Leo had helped set up over the years.
Once again, the Corkery name was all over the money flow.
The majority of CRC’s income came from 
"The 85 Fund",
a dark money non-profit that 
Leo repurposed to fund conservative causes nationwide,
and that fund paid $34 million in fees to his new advisory firm over a single two-year period.
As the money rolled in, Leo began to enjoy some of the same luxuries as the billionaires he had spent years courting.
For most of his three decades in Washington, Leo had led a modest home life,
living for years in a small apartment in the Randolph Towers complex in downtown Arlington,
before moving to a single-story five-bedroom family home in suburban McLean in 2010.
But in the years since 2016, he had spent millions of dollars on two new mansions in Maine,
bought four new cars,
and hired a wine buyer and locker at Morton’s, an upscale steakhouse three blocks from the Catholic Information Center.
It was only a foretaste of what was to come.
In 2020, Leo stepped back from his duties at the Federalist Society to focus on the
dark-money network he had fostered as a side hustle during his time there.
With him, he took one of the Federalist Society’s biggest donors:
a manufacturing billionaire from Chicago called
#Barre #Seid, who was Jewish by heritage but who shared many of Leo’s conservative views.
Over two decades, Seid had pumped at least $775 million into campaigns for libertarian and conservative causes,
quietly transforming himself into one of the most important donors on the political right.
Almost ninety, Seid had decided to leave his money continuing that work
— and concluded that Leo was the man to oversee that largesse.
Leo had betrayed his bosses, who had tasked him with wooing the billionaire as a potential donor for the Federalist Society.
Instead, Leo had cultivated him for his own network.
Seid signed his business over to Leo, giving him control over a $1.6 billion war chest and transforming him from a proxy for
dark-money donors into a donor himself.
Too SLOW, too mild.
Add 6 Justices in a row, starting in January, finish by December.
Set eaerly retirement dates, divided by the number of of unreported gifts during job.
Dont "Mueller" Court Reform.
Short-circuiting his #prosecutions or upending his #convictions would be the maddening capstone to a life of evading #responsibility for wrongdoing.
A sitting president can’t be prosecuted, under long-standing #DOJ policy, so the findings by special counsel Robert S. #Mueller III that #Trump might have committed 10 acts of #obstruction of #justice went nowhere.
Why is nobody asking why #MerrickGarland failed to revive the case and investigations of $10M from #Egypt to #Trump that #BillBar shut down?
#Garland failed on a lot of things, including in laying to waste all of the evidence #Mueller collected -- now under statute of limitations.
How did Garland fail to #FollowTheMoney on a case that the #FBI was already looking into under his predecessor?
Judges have also tossed efforts to invalidate the work of special counsels like Robert #Mueller, who examined connections between #Russia & #Trump’s 2016 campaign, & David C. Weiss, who has brought 2 #criminal cases against Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son.
Despite this record, however, Judge #AileenCannon has decided to consider the constitutionality of #JackSmith’s appointment anew —& not on the merits of written briefs, but rather at an expansive hearing that will spill across 2 days.
#AlexStamos founded the #Internet Observatory after publicizing that #Russia has attempted to #influence the #2016election by sowing division on #Facebook, causing a clash w/the company’s top execs. Special counsel Robert S. #Mueller III later cited the Facebook operation in indicting a Kremlin contractor. At #Stanford, Stamos & his team deepened his study of #InfluenceOperations from around the world, including 1 it traced to the #Pentagon.
#law #disinformation #NationalSecurity #CyberSecurity
#Blanche adds a third set of prosecutors #MichaelCohen met: the Manhattan DA’s office (the prosecutors at this trial) the NY state prosecutors.
(Not sure the point—that Cohen cooperates w/the #law?)
Next Blanche questions Cohen about his efforts to have his sentence reduced based on his cooperation w/prosecutors working for the# Russia investigation special counsel, #Mueller.
What person in jail wouldn’t ask this? what matters is he didn’t get it & cooperated anyway.
#MichaelCohen’s testimony at the Congressional hearing is certain to come up during cross-examination, including his assertion that he didn’t want a job in the WH.
Cohen is now discussing his meetings w/ Robert #Mueller, the special counsel investigating the #Trump campaign's ties to #Russia.
#MichaelCohen says he was told #Costello had worked for #Giuliani at #SDNY. By this time, Giuliani was about to become a lawyer for #Trump on the #Mueller investigation. Cohen testifies that Costello told him this would be a way to have a “backchannel” to #Trump.
In the middle of this Costello backchannel between Cohen & Trump, Cohen says, was Rudy Giuliani. [no bueno]
These same tweets were among the potential instances of #obstruction of #justice that were reviewed by Robert #Mueller, the special counsel who at the time was investigating the #Trump campaign’s possible ties to #Russia.
At this point in the narrative in 2018, #MichaelCohen was looking for reassurance that Trump was going to take care of him. He would soon lose that sense of security, as the #TrumpOrganization stopped paying some of Cohen’s #legal bills.
@GottaLaff @emptywheel
When #TheOrangeMenace was first impeached, the OLC ("Office of Legal Council") claimed sitting presidents can't be prosecuted.
#Mueller said that if that's the case, then he "absolutely can be prosecuted upon leaving office". Presumably, it was the only check left to stop a #Potus from breaking the law while in office.
NOW, his lawyers are trying to argue he can't be prosecuted AFTER leaving office either for things he did while potus. 
#NoOneIsAboveTheLaw
