The latest installment of President Donald Trump’s revenge tour is targeting the law firm that was hired by the Clinton campaign and linked to the opposition research firm behind the debunked Steele dossier.
In a fiery Truth Social post on Wednesday morning, the Republican announced he will be suing Perkins Coie, the white shoe Washington, D.C. law offices that hired Fusion GPS to manufacture a report alleging the Trump campaign contacted and coordinated with Russian sources to win the 2016 election. It was named after Christopher Steele, a former British counterintelligence professional who authored the dossier.
“I’m suing the law firm of Perkins Coie for their egregious and unlawful acts, in particular the conduct of a specific member of this firm, only to find out that the Judge assigned to this case is Beryl Howell, an Obama appointment, and a highly biased and unfair disaster,” Trump wrote, taking aim at Howell for earlier this month blocking a presidential order barring Perkins Coie employees from all federal government buildings.
Howell, a U.S. district judge, concluded that the “retaliatory animus” of the order was “clear on its face,” the NY Post reported.
“She ruled against me in the past, in a shocking display of sick judicial temperament, on a case that ended up working out very well for me, on appeal,” he added.
The law firm, which counts about 1,200 on staff, fired back in a countersuit against President Trump.
A copy of Trump’s order targeting Perkins Coie refers to the firm as “dishonest and dangerous” and alleges it discriminates against its own white employees. It directs U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and other high-level legal officials to investigate the firm to determine whether its remaining security clearances “are consistent with the national interest.”
None of the accusations contained in the Steele dossier were ever proven out, even with circumstantial evidence. The report was exhaustively examined by former FBI director Robert Mueller, who wrote that “the FBI was not able to corroborate a single substantive allegation contained in the Steele Reports.”
In 2023, special counsel John Durham released the results of a years-long investigation concluding that the Trump campaign did not participate in a conspiracy with Russian actors to win the 2016 election.
There are other signs that members of the administration aren’t ready to forgive and forget, either. Shortly before he was announced as the FBI’s deputy director, Dan Bongino in February posted a cryptic message online suggesting that Sen. Schiff may be in legal jeopardy for pushing the baseless Russian collusion story for years.
“I’m not letting this go. I wanna find out what happened because it can never happen again,” the former Secret Service agent said on an episode of his podcast. “We had the FBI, in conjunction with the Department of Justice, officials in Congress, foreign governments, and intel people fabricate a story, invent a story that could have done serious and long-term harm to international relations with a nuclear-powered foe.”
