This is the Kato Daily podcast for Tuesday, March 18, 2025.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The president of the United States is attempting to punish law firms that represent those who have opposed the president in court

and those who are seeking protection from potential legal action, the president might want to launch against them.

It strikes at the heart of the right to counsel in the Sixth Amendment and seems to be a clear attempt to signal that there will be consequences to providing vigorous representation to people opposed to the government's prerogatives.

Gatos Walter Olson and Mike Fox explain.

Walter, as clearly as you can, lay this out.

Since he was inaugurated, President Trump has now issued three executive orders, applying penalties, sanctions, call them what you will, against three of the nation's

best-known law firms, all of which were connected to cases in which their lawyers had argued

against them in court. And the sanctions are different from case to case, but they involve typically forbidding the lawyers

from setting foot in federal government buildings, which is pretty sweeping, considering

that courthouses as well as agencies are in those buildings, stripping lawyers of security clearances, going through federal contracts,

not only to make sure the federal government is not contracting with those law firms, but in

some of the cases, requiring federal contractors to disclose whether or not they have completely

unrelated legal business through those firms, presumably

for better block listing purposes, and on down the line through a couple of others.

And the particular connection varies. In the case of Covington and Burling, the first one,

they gave free pro bono legal advice to former federal prosecutor Jack Smith, who of course

prosecuted Trump. And they did so after he had departed federal employment in order to prepare

him for possible legal trouble that Trump's allies might try to cause him. But it was, again,

this was someone who was, you know,

as far as I know, has committed no crime and they were giving advice out of public spiritedness.

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