Editorials & Other Articles

The victories for the quartet — Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie and Susman Godfrey — looked even better last week when the Trump Justice Department announced plans to throw in the towel: Instead of appealing their earlier defeats, DOJ lawyers said they would abandon their defense of the president’s executive orders.

One day later, federal prosecutors changed their mind, completed a 180-degree turn and notified the four firms that they would proceed with the appeal after all.

It seemed rather obvious from a distance that someone in a high position of influence had intervened in the matter, and according to the latest reporting from The Wall Street Journal, that person is exactly who most observers assumed it was.

The Justice Department’s surprise reversal last week on defending the White House’s sanctions against law firms came after an angry outburst by President Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

After The Wall Street Journal reported on March 2 that the department was dropping its defense of executive orders that outlined punishments against specific law firms, Trump told advisers to stop it immediately, the people said.

.....The move opened the door to the administration extending a losing legal fight simply to make the president feel better — a variety of judges from across the ideological spectrum have already ruled against the White House in this case, concluding that the move was plainly illegal — though Trump evidently doesn’t much care......

To be sure, none of these developments was or is especially surprising. It’s been obvious for the past 14 months or so that the Justice Department has become an extension of the West Wing, and the reversal in the case against the defiant law firms reinforces the unmistakable pattern.

But the revelations add fresh weight to the broader indictment about Trump’s control over federal law enforcement.

A few weeks ago, Main Justice unfurled a giant banner featuring the president’s face on its facade. The move removed a pretense that no one took seriously anyway. As The Wall Street Journal summarized in November, this is a Justice Department in which the president, not the attorney general, “calls the shots.”