The White Home issued a memo on March 22, 2025 ominously titled Stopping Abuses of the Authorized System and the Federal Court docket.
The phrase “Let’s Kill All of the Legal professionals” is from William Shakespeare’s Henry VI mentioned by a personality referred to as Dick the Butcher in Act IV, Scene II. This phrase has been seized upon to disprage the authorized occupation and legal professionals as crooked and overpriced. Maybe Stephen Miller, advisor to President Trump on proscribing immigration, who could have had a hand in autoring the memo, additionally understands legal professionals on this method and worse as “[threatening] our nationwide safety, homeland safety, public security, or election integrity.”
However there may be one other which means to this phrase. Dick the Butcher is a murderous thug and the correct hand man of Jack Cade who’s main a rise up in opposition to King Henry. They kill anybody who can learn and burn all books and paperwork they encounter. They know will probably be be simpler for them to take over an ignnorant inhabitants over one the place eveyone undersands their rights. To ensure that their rise up to Suceeed Dick is suggesting that they need to eradicate the legal professionals, the defenders of justice, who stand of their method. Legal professionals are the final protection in opposition to the grossest manifestation of energy and tyranny.
Trump, and his assistant Miller, like Dick the Butcher, are actually attacking the immigration bar by this memo. Supposedly unethical legal professionals are standing of their solution to dismantle an immigration system that enables the persecuted to hunt safety within the US. The memo suggests methods to “kill the legal professionals” by sanctinoing and displining them by varied disciplinary guidelines.
Clearly, this isn’t true. The Immigration Bar and Legal professionals in Huge Regulation doing immigration professional bono are moral. In any other case, they might have been sanctioned by now by vigilant disiplinary authorities. Trump is participating in delirious fantasy. Legal professionals should stand agency however this nonsensical bluster and proceed to symbolize noncitizens in asylum claims. If legal professionals fall, who will defend the defenders of the Structure?
Everything of this absurd memo is reproduced right here:
SUBJECT: Stopping Abuses of the Authorized System and the Federal Court docket
Legal professionals and regulation corporations that have interaction in actions that violate the legal guidelines of america or guidelines governing lawyer conduct should be effectively and successfully held accountable. Accountability is particularly essential when misconduct by legal professionals and regulation corporations threatens our nationwide safety, homeland safety, public security, or election integrity.
Current examples of grossly unethical misconduct are far too widespread. As an example, in 2016, Marc Elias, founder and chair of Elias Regulation Group LLP, was deeply concerned within the creation of a false “file” by a international nationwide designed to supply a fraudulent foundation for Federal regulation enforcement to research a Presidential candidate with the intention to alter the end result of the Presidential election. Elias additionally deliberately sought to hide the position of his consumer — failed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton — within the file.
The immigration system — the place rampant fraud and meritless claims have supplanted the constitutional and lawful bases upon which the President workout routines core powers beneath Article II of america Structure — is likewise replete with examples of unscrupulous conduct by attorneys and regulation corporations. As an example, the immigration bar, and highly effective Huge Regulation professional bono practices, continuously coach purchasers to hide their previous or lie about their circumstances when asserting their asylum claims, all in an try to avoid immigration insurance policies enacted to guard our nationwide safety and deceive the immigration authorities and courts into granting them undeserved aid. Gathering the required info to refute these fraudulent claims imposes an unlimited burden on the Federal Authorities. And this fraud in flip undermines the integrity of our immigration legal guidelines and the authorized occupation extra broadly — to say nothing of the simple, tragic penalties of the ensuing mass unlawful immigration, whether or not by way of heinous crimes in opposition to harmless victims like Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, or Rachel Morin, or the large drain on taxpayer sources meant for People.
Federal Rule of Civil Process 11 prohibits attorneys from participating in sure unethical conduct in Federal courts. Attorneys should not current authorized filings “for improper objective[s],” together with “to harass, trigger pointless delay, or needlessly enhance the price of litigation.” FRCP 11(b)(1). Attorneys should be certain that authorized arguments are “warranted by current regulation or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing current regulation or for establishing new regulation.” FRCP 11(b)(2). And attorneys should be certain that their statements about details are “fairly primarily based” on evidentiary assist, or a perception that such proof truly exists. FRCP 11(b)(3)-(b)(4). When these instructions are violated, opposing events are licensed to file a movement for sanctions. FRCP 11(c). The textual content of the rule particularly addresses and offers for sanctions for attorneys and their corporations in addition to for recalcitrant events given the solemn obligation that attorneys need to respect the rule of regulation and uphold our Nation’s authorized system with integrity. Moreover, Rule 3.1 of the Mannequin Guidelines of Skilled Conduct offers that, “A lawyer shall not deliver or defend a continuing, or assert or controvert a difficulty therein, until there’s a foundation in regulation and reality for doing so that isn’t frivolous, which features a good religion argument for an extension, modification or reversal of current regulation.”
Sadly, far too many attorneys and regulation corporations have lengthy ignored these necessities when litigating in opposition to the Federal Authorities or in pursuing baseless partisan assaults. To deal with these considerations, I hereby direct the Lawyer Common to hunt sanctions in opposition to attorneys and regulation corporations who have interaction in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation in opposition to america or in issues earlier than govt departments and companies of america.
I additional direct the Lawyer Common and the Secretary of Homeland Safety to prioritize enforcement of their respective laws governing lawyer conduct and self-discipline. See, e.g., 8 C.F.R. 292.1 et seq.; 8 C.F.R. 1003.101 et seq.; 8 C.F.R. 1292.19.
I additional direct the Lawyer Common to take all acceptable motion to refer for disciplinary motion any lawyer whose conduct in Federal court docket or earlier than any part of the Federal Authorities seems to violate skilled conduct guidelines, together with guidelines governing meritorious claims and contentions, and notably in circumstances that implicate nationwide safety, homeland safety, public security, or election integrity. In complying with this directive, the Lawyer Common shall take into account the moral duties that regulation companions have when supervising junior attorneys, together with imputing the moral misconduct of junior attorneys to companions or the regulation agency when acceptable.
I additional direct that, when the Lawyer Common determines that conduct by an lawyer or regulation agency in litigation in opposition to the Federal Authorities warrants in search of sanctions or different disciplinary motion, the Lawyer Common shall, in session with any related senior govt official, advocate to the President, by the Assistant to the President for Home Coverage, further steps which may be taken, together with reassessment of safety clearances held by the lawyer or termination of any Federal contract for which the related lawyer or regulation agency has been employed to carry out providers.
I additional direct the Lawyer Common, in session with any related senior govt official, to evaluation conduct by attorneys or their regulation corporations in litigation in opposition to the Federal Authorities over the past 8 years. If the Lawyer Common identifies misconduct that will warrant further motion, equivalent to submitting frivolous litigation or participating in fraudulent practices, the Lawyer Common is directed to advocate to the President, by the Assistant to the President for Home Coverage, further steps which may be taken, together with reassessment of safety clearances held by the lawyer, termination of any contract for which the related lawyer or regulation agency has been employed to carry out providers, or some other acceptable actions.
Regulation corporations and particular person attorneys have an incredible energy, and obligation, to serve the rule of regulation, justice, and order. The Lawyer Common, alongside the Counsel to the President, shall report back to the President periodically on enhancements by corporations to seize this hopeful imaginative and prescient.
