Posted on July 15, 2025
(BOSTON, MA) – Free Speech For People, a national non-profit legal advocacy organization, submitted letters today to the Attorneys General of California, Illinois, and Massachusetts, and the relevant district attorneys in each jurisdiction, to launch criminal investigations into President Donald Trump’s extortion of nearly $1 billion in legal services from at least nine law firms. On June 24, 2025, the organization issued similar letters to state and local prosecutors in New York and Pennsylvania.
Since taking office, Trump has issued a series of executive orders that unlawfully impose a broad range of harms onto certain law firms against whom Trump has developed a personal vendetta because of the firms’ viewpoints, advocacy for clients, and hiring practices. These punishing measures include ending the firm’s government contracts, revoking attorneys’ security clearances, and demanding that government contractors disclose business with these firms and face their own investigations. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission also has opened investigations into twenty additional law firms because they maintained lawful diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. The threatened investigations would subject them to onerous proceedings, force them to turn over sensitive employee information to a hostile administration, and leave the firms vulnerable to targeted executive orders in the future.
To obtain recission of the unconstitutional orders or to avoid baseless investigations, firms began to give in to Trump’s demands. He extracted nearly $1 billion in free legal services for himself, his allies, and his pet projects. Trump’s demands infringe on these firms’ independence and will significantly impact and drain their financial resources.
The letters explain that “[t]he extortion of free legal assistance from large law firms is a brazen abuse of power that attacks attorney independence and undermines the adversarial system that is at the heart of our country’s rule of law” ...
https://freespeechforpeople.org/attack-on-the-rule-of-law-public-interest-group-calls-for-criminal-investigations-into-trumps-extortion-of-law-firms-in-california-illinois-and-massachusetts/
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