President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting the law firm representing former special counsel Jack Smith.
Covington & Burling LLP currently represents Smith in a personal capacity and previously provided pro bono legal services to the special counsel’s office, according to White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf.
The new executive order suspends the security clearance held by Smith’s attorney Peter Koski, along with those of any other attorneys at the firm who assisted Smith as special counsel, pending a review of their roles, if any, in the “weaponization of the judicial process.”
It also directs the Office of Management and Budget to “terminate any engagement” with the firm.
“We’re going to call it the deranged Jack Smith signing or bill,” Trump told reporters before the signing, according to CNN. Afterward, he handed the pen he’d used to an attendee and said, “Why don’t you give it to Jack Smith?”
The action is a “major escalation” in Trump’s targeting of his perceived enemies, according to ABC News.
Security clearances give lawyers flexibility when working on cases involving national security issues and classified information, according to CNN. Suspending the clearances means defendants can’t use the lawyers of their choosing.
“We recently agreed to represent Jack Smith when it became apparent that he would become a subject of a government investigation,” a spokesman for Covington & Burling told CNN. The firm “serves as defense counsel to Jack Smith in his personal, individual capacity.”
In addition to Koski, who is a former public integrity prosecutor, Smith is being represented by Lenny Breuer, the former head of the Justice Department’s criminal division. The firm declined to say how many of his lawyers held security clearances, CNN said.
In November 2022, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith as special counsel overseeing two criminal investigations into Trump’s role in the deadly riot at the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, and his handling of classified military intelligence after leaving office at the end of his first term.
Despite grand jury indictments in both cases, one of Trump’s own judicial appointees threw out the classified documents case. The election interference case was suspended after Trump was re-elected in November. (The Department of Justice has a standing rule not to prosecute sitting presidents.)
A source told ABC there was “no evidence” Covington & Burling had played a role in Smith’s investigation of Trump.
Asked on Tuesday whether his executive action was a form of political targeting, Trump cut off the reporter, ABC reported.
“I’ve been targeted for four years longer than that. So, you don’t tell me about targeting,” he said. “I was the target of corrupt politicians for four years, and then four years after that. So don’t talk to me about targeting.”
