'Great villains': Law firms that 'groveled' to Trump scorched as revenge bid dropped

President Donald Trump's Justice Department backed down on Monday on a huge monthslong legal battle, no longer defending a series of executive orders that attacked prominent law firms that represented anti-Trump clients in the past.

It's a huge victory for the rule of law, voting rights attorney Marc Elias told MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace — but also a huge black eye for the law firms that made deals with Trump to avoid similar regulatory action against them.

"Donald Trump will do whatever he can get away with doing, and a lot of it isn't legal," said Wallace. "An alarming amount of it is unconstitutional, and he will move on and bully someone else if people stand up to him. Well, why isn't that lesson sort of internalized writ large on the pro-democracy side?"

"I think today is going to be remembered as one of the most important days for the opposition movement against Donald Trump," said Elias, who runs both the Elias Law Group and the media outlet Democracy Docket. "Today was the day that the law firms that stood up tall and said to Donald Trump, we will not bow down to you. We will not obey. We will not bend the knee. Today is the day that the Department of Justice ... [stopped fighting] the victory that the law firms had against the Department of Justice. And what that means for everyone listening is that the four law firms that stood their ground, they can proceed on and have government contracts and enter buildings and do all of the things that Donald Trump tried to deny them."

At the same time, he said, "For the 9 or 10 law firms that capitulated and collaborated, they still have to provide free legal services to Donald Trump."

"They still have to look at themselves in the mirror and explain why they settled a case that wound up getting dismissed, and that the Department of Justice then dropped," said Elias. "They have to explain to their clients why anyone would hire them when they were so cowardly, when they lacked even the basic spine expected of any lawyer, no less one who charges thousands of dollars an hour, and they settled a claim and groveled in the Oval Office rather than standing up to fight."

"And most importantly, they're going to have to explain to their children and their grandchildren and future generations that will remember them by name, when democracy was under attack, when large institutions were asked to do the bare minimum to stand up, not to show the courage that the people of Minneapolis showed. Not to show the activism of millions of people, that No Kings rallies, but to show the basic minimum amount of decency and backbone they'll have to explain to their children, grandchildren and future generations why they couldn't muster that. History will remember them as the great villains and great cowards of this era."

"And so I hope we celebrate today as a victory for everyone who stands up and tall and does not bow down to Donald Trump," Elias concluded. "But I also hope we we redouble our efforts to remember who the villains were, who the cowards were, who had every advantage in life and yet refused to bear any burden to do the right thing."

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