\u2026The administration would rather not.<\/p>\n
The ABA sued the Executive Office of the President in June 2025<\/a>, arguing that the executive orders, plus the wave of deals that spooked firms into capitulating before an order ever arrived, added up to a single coordinated campaign to intimidate the legal profession, not a scattering of unrelated grievances. Judge Ali denied the government\u2019s motion to dismiss, and the case moved into discovery, where the ABA started asking the White House to turn over its receipts: internal communications about the orders and the deals, including those involving Boris Epshteyn and Steve Bannon. The government has spent the summer trying to make discovery go away \u2014 it subpoenaed law firms rather than hand over its own documents<\/a> \u2014 which is still pending. After a July 31 hearing on the ABA\u2019s motion to compel, Judge Ali entered the order now at issue.<\/p>\n In a notice filed Monday<\/a>, DOJ formally invoked the presidential communications privilege \u2014 the Nixon-tapes privilege, reserved for the confidential advice a president gets while governing \u2014 over the identities themselves. The government\u2019s position is that telling a court who drafted an executive order \u2014 a public document, signed by the President, and struck down as unconstitutional four separate times<\/a> \u2014 would do such violence to the separation of powers that the President has \u201cno choice\u201d but to assert the privilege over the names as well as any advice they may have provided.<\/p>\n And DOJ is admirably candid about why. The whole point of making the government name these people, it says, is \u201cto name and shame them\u2014but that is the very chilling effect that the presidential communications privilege is supposed to protect. This is Nixon distilled.\u201d What a wild thing to write down. First of all, United States v. Nixon<\/em> is the case the government lost<\/em>! It stands for the proposition that while executive privilege exists, it is not absolute! The Supreme Court ordered the tapes handed over and the President resigned two weeks later. And again, this is about the names<\/em> of who is involved not even the substance of the advice receivd.<\/p>\n And, not for nothing, but you only worry about people being \u201cshamed\u201d if there\u2019s something there to be ashamed of.<\/p>\n All this comes on the heels \u2014 a mere week later \u2014 of the Office of Legal Counsel\u2019s stretching of executive privilege<\/a> to include the president\u2019s \u201cprivate advisers,\u201d meaning non-government employees. If I put my thinking cap on, and look at these two closely timed events, well, I sure get the impression a \u201cprivate adviser\u201d was up to his elbows in the Biglaw EOs. (We already know Steve Bannon said the goal of the EOs was to \u201cput you out of business and bankrupt you,\u201d<\/a> and that Boris Epshteyn was allegedly connecting capitulating firms to the Commerce Department.)<\/p>\n For an administration that put out a press release, a fact sheet, and a signing-ceremony photo op for every one of these orders, the sudden bashfulness is something to behold. They wanted the whole world to know these orders existed, now they don\u2019t want anyone to know who to blame for them.<\/p>\n Earlier<\/strong>: DOJ Wants Susman Godfrey Kicked Off The ABA\u2019s Case Because DOJ Subpoenaed Susman Godfrey<\/a> Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The post The Trump Administration Says The Names Of The People Who Wrote The Biglaw Executive Orders Are A Secret<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n A federal judge asked the Trump administration a simple question: who drafted, reviewed, and approved the executive orders targeting Biglaw firms?<\/p>\n You know the kind of basic information that appears on privilege logs every single day. Not the internal communications, not the drafts, the edits, the strategy memos (at least not yet). Just the names of the people who worked on the orders that tried to blacklist disfavored law firms<\/a> out of existence. In the ABA\u2019s lawsuit over that whole campaign<\/a>, Judge Amir Ali ordered the government to file a notice identifying the individuals involved in drafting the Biglaw Executive Orders, and the custodians of a handful of records. The most basic housekeeping in all of civil discovery.<\/p>\n \u2026The administration would rather not.<\/p>\n The ABA sued the Executive Office of the President in June 2025<\/a>, arguing that the executive orders, plus the wave of deals that spooked firms into capitulating before an order ever arrived, added up to a single coordinated campaign to intimidate the legal profession, not a scattering of unrelated grievances. Judge Ali denied the government\u2019s motion to dismiss, and the case moved into discovery, where the ABA started asking the White House to turn over its receipts: internal communications about the orders and the deals, including those involving Boris Epshteyn and Steve Bannon. The government has spent the summer trying to make discovery go away \u2014 it subpoenaed law firms rather than hand over its own documents<\/a> \u2014 which is still pending. After a July 31 hearing on the ABA\u2019s motion to compel, Judge Ali entered the order now at issue.<\/p>\n In a notice filed Monday<\/a>, DOJ formally invoked the presidential communications privilege \u2014 the Nixon-tapes privilege, reserved for the confidential advice a president gets while governing \u2014 over the identities themselves. The government\u2019s position is that telling a court who drafted an executive order \u2014 a public document, signed by the President, and struck down as unconstitutional four separate times<\/a> \u2014 would do such violence to the separation of powers that the President has \u201cno choice\u201d but to assert the privilege over the names as well as any advice they may have provided.<\/p>\n And DOJ is admirably candid about why. The whole point of making the government name these people, it says, is \u201cto name and shame them\u2014but that is the very chilling effect that the presidential communications privilege is supposed to protect. This is Nixon distilled.\u201d What a wild thing to write down. First of all, United States v. Nixon<\/em> is the case the government lost<\/em>! It stands for the proposition that while executive privilege exists, it is not absolute! The Supreme Court ordered the tapes handed over and the President resigned two weeks later. And again, this is about the names<\/em> of who is involved not even the substance of the advice receivd.<\/p>\n And, not for nothing, but you only worry about people being \u201cshamed\u201d if there\u2019s something there to be ashamed of.<\/p>\n All this comes on the heels \u2014 a mere week later \u2014 of the Office of Legal Counsel\u2019s stretching of executive privilege<\/a> to include the president\u2019s \u201cprivate advisers,\u201d meaning non-government employees. If I put my thinking cap on, and look at these two closely timed events, well, I sure get the impression a \u201cprivate adviser\u201d was up to his elbows in the Biglaw EOs. (We already know Steve Bannon said the goal of the EOs was to \u201cput you out of business and bankrupt you,\u201d<\/a> and that Boris Epshteyn was allegedly connecting capitulating firms to the Commerce Department.)<\/p>\n For an administration that put out a press release, a fact sheet, and a signing-ceremony photo op for every one of these orders, the sudden bashfulness is something to behold. They wanted the whole world to know these orders existed, now they don\u2019t want anyone to know who to blame for them.<\/p>\n Earlier<\/strong>: DOJ Wants Susman Godfrey Kicked Off The ABA\u2019s Case Because DOJ Subpoenaed Susman Godfrey<\/a> Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The post The Trump Administration Says The Names Of The People Who Wrote The Biglaw Executive Orders Are A Secret<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A federal judge asked the Trump administration a simple question: who drafted, reviewed, and approved the executive orders targeting Biglaw firms? You know the kind of basic information that appears on privilege logs every single day. Not the internal communications, not the drafts, the edits, the strategy memos (at least not yet). Just the names […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":160851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_5243-1-scaled-e1623338814705-620x568-RF79pr.jpg?fit=620%2C568&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The DOJ\u2019s Biglaw Subpoena Explanation Raises More Questions Than It Answers<\/a>
Trump Turns On Capitulating Biglaw Firms HAHAHAHAHA<\/a>
The ABA Wants The White House\u2019s Receipts On The Biglaw Executive Orders<\/a>
DOJ Drops Defense Of Biglaw Executive Orders, Leaving Capitulating Firms Holding $940 Million Bag<\/a>
Trump Is 0-4 Defending His Biglaw Executive Orders<\/a>
Trump Sued By ABA Over\u2026 Gestures At Months Of Lawlessness<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2021\/06\/IMG_5243-1-scaled-e1623338814705-620x568.jpg?resize=174%2C160&ssl=1\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n
The DOJ\u2019s Biglaw Subpoena Explanation Raises More Questions Than It Answers<\/a>
Trump Turns On Capitulating Biglaw Firms HAHAHAHAHA<\/a>
The ABA Wants The White House\u2019s Receipts On The Biglaw Executive Orders<\/a>
DOJ Drops Defense Of Biglaw Executive Orders, Leaving Capitulating Firms Holding $940 Million Bag<\/a>
Trump Is 0-4 Defending His Biglaw Executive Orders<\/a>
Trump Sued By ABA Over\u2026 Gestures At Months Of Lawlessness<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n