Daily Beast - A federal judge accused President Donald Trump of trying to metaphorically “kill all the lawyers” in a scathing Friday ruling that declares his assault on a top law firm unconstitutional.
Senior district judge Beryl Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, barred Trump from carrying out the executive order penalizing law firm Perkins Coie for representing 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, one of his political enemies.
“No American President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit targeting a prominent law firm with adverse actions to be executed by all Executive branch agencies but,” Howell wrote, “in purpose and effect, this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’”
The president’s order had stripped Perkins Coie of security clearances, limited its access to government buildings, and told government agencies to terminate their contracts with the firm.
The 102-page ruling offers a blistering indictment of Trump’s actions before declaring that his order “violates the Constitution and is thus null and void.”
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