Other elite #law firms have been hit w/similar sanctions, leaving them to choose whether to fight the orders or cut a *deal* w/ #Trump to remove the restrictions, even as a judge has already blocked one of the orders because it is likely to be unlawful.
The order said Trump was in part punishing #WilmerHale for the firm’s connections to #Mueller, who led an inquiry that the order described as “one of the most partisan investigations in American history.”
#Trump Targets #WilmerHale, Citing #LawFirm’s Connection to #RobertMueller
#Mueller, who worked at WilmerHale before retiring in 2021, had investigated the Trump campaign’s ties to #Russia during Trump’s first term.
#law #RevengePolitics #authoritarianism #autocracy #tyranny #MafiaState #TheRealWeaponizationOfGovernment
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/us/politics/trump-wilmerhale-law-firm-mueller.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=p&pvid=EB968B02-59E6-44C9-B0A7-4057762D4A42
But even the facts #Mueller was able to produce, despite noncooperation from #Trump’s top lieutenants, were astonishing. #Putin dangled a Moscow building deal in front of the #TrumpOrganization worth hundreds of millions of dollars, & Trump lied about it, giving Putin leverage over him. Trump’s campaign chair, #PaulManafort, was in business w/a Russian #intelligence officer.
#Trump was not explaining why a deal w/ #Russia would advance #America’s interests, or why honoring it would advance Russia’s. He was defending Russia’s integrity by vouching for #Putin’s character.
In recent yrs, the kinship between Trump & Putin has become somewhat unfashionable to point out. After #Mueller disappointed liberals by failing to prove a #criminal #conspiracy btwn the Trump campaign & Russia, conventional wisdom on much of the center & left…came to treat the scandal as overblown.
[#Garland also let #Mueller evidence rot and expire instead of prosecuting #Trump for crimes that Mueller had not "exonerated" him for.]
>> Did Bill Barr kill the obstruction case that is mentioned in the lawfare story I linked to?
…And, here is @aaron.rupar weighing in on this in #PublicNotice.
In 2008, Epstein received a mere eighteen-month sentence for soliciting, molesting, and raping underage girls. The sentence was the result of a strange and disturbing plea deal between Mueller’s FBI…and Alexander Acosta, who was then the US Attorney for South Florida and who became Trump’s secretary of labor.
—Sarah Kendzior, Hiding in Plain Sight
#epstein #mueller #acosta #trump
@emptywheel @tobie1 @KathyLK @davetroy
>> By "Garland" you mean, "holy hell I couldn't figure out how to spell Jeffrey Rosen."
No, I really meant #Garland, as in #MerrickGarland (R), appointed by #JoeBiden (D) as US Attorney General in 2021 after #Trump was evicted by the People, and per OLC memo, became eligible for prosecution of potential crimes that #Mueller was neither able to exonerate Trump of nor prosecute him for when Bill Barr & Jeffrey Rosen were in charge
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/where-justice-department-trump-obstruction-offenses
@tobie1 @KathyLK @davetroy @emptywheel
>> …start from the bottom and work your way up. And that is what's apparently happened in the Jan 6 investigation, which is why there's a case pending in Judge Chutkan's court.
The case in Judge #Chutkan's court is for the TOP.
In a bottoms-up, collaborators in Congress would come before #Trump.
>> Do you really believe Jack Smith started from scratch rather than inherited an investigation?
He only inherited #Mueller investigation & let evidence rot
@tobie1 @KathyLK @davetroy @emptywheel
>> Garland even let SS texts re Trump/Pence get Epsteined instead of impounding the exec dept property 
#Garland also let #Mueller evidence rot and expire instead of prosecuting #Trump for crimes that Mueller had not "exonerated" him for.
Not sure when Garland started J6 investigation but it seems like #J6Committee "jolted" him into action.
Least he could've done is immediately impound SS texts which as Exec branch property didn't require subpoenas.
Leo’s status as the world’s third most powerful figure soon made him a rich man.
During his time at the Federalist Society,
he had hardly been a pauper,
bringing in around $400,000 a year.
But with six children attending The Heights and Oakcrest, the two Opus Dei schools that charged up to $30,000 tuition annually per student,
and a burgeoning taste for good food and expensive wines,
it didn’t take long to burn through his salary.
But his life had taken a lavish turn after Trump’s victory
and his appointment as an unpaid advisor to the president on judicial appointments.
The dramatic uptick in his personal fortune dovetailed with his joining a for-profit entity called "CRC Advisors", alongside another CIC board member #Greg #Mueller.
Mueller had spearheaded the "National Organization for Marriage" vitriolic public relations strategy,
and #CRC quickly established itself as the go-to advisory firm for the dark-money network of nonprofit entities that Leo had helped set up over the years.
Once again, the Corkery name was all over the money flow.
The majority of CRC’s income came from "The 85 Fund",
a dark money non-profit that Leo repurposed to fund conservative causes nationwide,
and that fund paid $34 million in fees to his new advisory firm over a single two-year period.
As the money rolled in, Leo began to enjoy some of the same luxuries as the billionaires he had spent years courting.
For most of his three decades in Washington, Leo had led a modest home life,
living for years in a small apartment in the Randolph Towers complex in downtown Arlington,
before moving to a single-story five-bedroom family home in suburban McLean in 2010.
But in the years since 2016, he had spent millions of dollars on two new mansions in Maine,
bought four new cars,
and hired a wine buyer and locker at Morton’s, an upscale steakhouse three blocks from the Catholic Information Center.
It was only a foretaste of what was to come.
In 2020, Leo stepped back from his duties at the Federalist Society to focus on the
dark-money network he had fostered as a side hustle during his time there.
With him, he took one of the Federalist Society’s biggest donors:
a manufacturing billionaire from Chicago called
#Barre #Seid, who was Jewish by heritage but who shared many of Leo’s conservative views.
Over two decades, Seid had pumped at least $775 million into campaigns for libertarian and conservative causes,
quietly transforming himself into one of the most important donors on the political right.
Almost ninety, Seid had decided to leave his money continuing that work
— and concluded that Leo was the man to oversee that largesse.
Leo had betrayed his bosses, who had tasked him with wooing the billionaire as a potential donor for the Federalist Society.
Instead, Leo had cultivated him for his own network.
Seid signed his business over to Leo, giving him control over a 
$1.6 billion war chest
and transforming him from a proxy for
dark-money donors into a donor himself.
