Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump’s Yanking of Clearances From Law Firm Tied to Steele Dossier

The firm argued that the president’s executive order violated its rights of free speech, free association, and due process.

President Donald Trump speaks as he signs executive orders, including one terminating the security clearances of Perkins Coie employees, in the Oval Office on March 6, 2025. Alex Wong/Getty Images

A federal judge on March 12 agreed to temporarily block President Donald Trump’s executive order stripping security clearances from employees at a prominent Washington law firm that was involved in generating the controversial Steele dossier.

Trump signed the order on March 6, citing law firm Perkins Coie’s work during the 2016 election, when Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) paid the firm more than $1 million to hire opposition research company Fusion GPS. Trump’s order also targeted the firm’s policies promoting workforce diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Perkins Coie sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, arguing that the president’s order violated the firm’s rights of free speech, free association, and due process under the Constitution.

During a Wednesday hearing in Washington, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said she would grant the firm’s request for a temporary restraining order against the president’s order, which also sought to limit Perkins Coie’s work with federal contractors.

Trump ordered a government review aimed at ending all contracts the firm currently holds with any federal agencies and a review seeking to cancel contracts with its clients. The order also limits its lawyers’ ability to access government officials or retain security clearances.

In its lawsuit, Perkins Coie wrote that seven of its clients, including a major government contractor, had already pulled back legal work following Trump’s order or were planning to, resulting in “significant revenue” losses for the firm.

Government officials have also blocked or discouraged the firm’s attorneys from participating in meetings due to Trump’s order, according to the lawsuit.

In 2016, after receiving funding from the DNC and Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele, a retired British counterintelligence specialist, to gather research into allegations that Trump’s 2016 campaign had conspired with the Russian government to win the presidential election.

Steele’s research was compiled into a dossier that BuzzFeed News published without his consent in 2017. The outlet was criticized for not first independently verifying many of the report’s salacious allegations, which sparked scrutiny among many journalists.

While some of the dossier’s more general findings—including that Russia was working to get Trump elected and sought to influence some of his associates—were later corroborated by U.S. intelligence agencies and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, the report has been largely debunked, and no one in the president’s orbit was ever formally accused of conspiring with Russia.

Trump previously sued Clinton, Perkins Coie, and others, alleging they conspired to rig the 2016 election against him. A federal judge in Florida dismissed the lawsuit in 2022.

In February, Trump similarly ordered the suspension of security clearances for employees at Covington & Burling LLP, a Washington-based law firm that worked on former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations of Trump.

Reuters contributed to this report.