Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks to reporters as President Donald Trump listens, Friday, June 27, 2025, in the briefing room of the White House in Washington (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin).
The DOJ formally brought an end to multiple appeals of court rulings that concluded President Donald Trump's executive orders to punish Democratic "lawfare" were unconstitutional, leaving egg on the faces of law firms that cut deals to avoid sanctions.
Before the notice of dismissal hit the docket late Monday, there were already rumblings that the DOJ was done with defending the orders at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Trump's "Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court" memorandum from March was broadly perceived from the start as an injection of abuses, a pattern of the president using his power to target perceived enemies — especially those who investigated or sued him — and bend them to his will.
For example, Trump got his wish and saw criminal prosecutions of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, but those cases were dismissed for a fundamental failure before the DOJ could make substantial progress. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's DOJ has spent time trying and failing to allege judicial misconduct on the part of a judge who has repeatedly ruled against the administration and threatened contempt. Likewise, the DOJ recently failed to indict Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and other Democrats for encouraging service members to ignore "illegal orders," and then lost out in civil court as a judge picked apart an open retaliation campaign.
Trump has more successfully sued various media companies while president, even with a major merger on the line, and secured million-dollar settlements, as those entities apparently calculated that the payouts were less trouble than fighting back in court.
While several law firms decided it would be best to placate the administration by offering free legal services, Jenner & Block, Perkins Coie, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, and Susman Godfrey launched First Amendment lawsuits and successfully blocked the orders in federal district court.
The DOJ has now waved the white flag, with an unopposed motion to dismiss its appeals.
"Defendant-Appellants respectfully move to voluntarily dismiss these consolidated appeals, with all parties to bear their own fees and costs. Counsel for Plaintiff-Appellees have authorized Defendant-Appellants to state that Plaintiff-Appellees consent to this motion," the filing said in brief.
Among the exuberant was onetime Trump RICO lawsuit defendant Marc Elias, an election lawyer who played a prominent role in beating back Trump's lawsuits after the 2020 election, represented the DNC, and served as the Hillary Clinton campaign's general counsel in 2016.
Elias was mentioned by name in Trump's "Preventing Abuses" memo, repeating the claim that the attorney is to blame for Christopher Steele's dossier and the Russia probe that followed.
"Recent examples of grossly unethical misconduct are far too common. For instance, in 2016, Marc Elias, founder and chair of Elias Law Group LLP, was deeply involved in the creation of a false 'dossier' by a foreign national designed to provide a fraudulent basis for Federal law enforcement to investigate a Presidential candidate in order to alter the outcome of the Presidential election," the memo said. "Elias also intentionally sought to conceal the role of his client — failed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton — in the dossier."
In response to the dropped appeals, Elias bashed the "Big Law firms that capitulated to Trump" and said they were "humiliated" now that "DOJ has given up."
During a segment on MS NOW, Elias went even further.
Today was an important day for the opposition movement. The law firms that stood up against Donald Trump threats won.
Those that capitulated and collaborated with Trump will need to explain to future generations why, when democracy was at stake, they were such cowards. pic.twitter.com/F9kT62gCDn
— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) March 3, 2026
"Today was the day that the law firms that stood up tall and said to Donald Trump 'we will not bow down to you, we will not obey, we will not bend a knee,'" Elias said. "The four law firms that stood their ground, they can proceed on and have government contracts and enter buildings and do all the things that Donald Trump tried to deny them. And for the nine of 10 lawsuits that capitulated or collaborated, they still have to provide free legal services to Donald Trump."
"They still have to look at themselves in the mirror and explain why they settled a case that wound up getting dismissed and the Department of Justice then dropped," he added. "They have to explain to their clients why anyone would hire them when they were so cowardly, when they lacked even the basic spine expected of any lawyer, no less one who charges thousands of dollars an hour."
Though the DOJ has reportedly not commented on the development, the firms each hailed the government's move to drop the appeals as the correct one.
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