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Lisa Rubin Profile picture
@lawofruby
Jun 6 • 9 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
NEW: The Paul Weiss departures keep coming, this time with former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Damian Williams exiting . . . for Jenner & Block.

jenner.com/en/news-insigh…
Williams -- a former Garland & Stevens clerk who has never worked at a law firm other than Paul Weiss -- served as the U.S. Attorney throughout Biden's presidency and oversaw the prosecutions of Ghislaine Maxwell, Sam Bankman-Fried, Sean Combs, and, of course, Eric Adams.
Williams then was pilloried by Trump's DOJ for allegedly pursuing Adams for political reasons--a narrative wholly rejected by Judge Dale Ho after examining the record presented by DOJ in seeking Adams's dismissal.
Yet just two weeks before Ho's decision vindicating Williams and his colleagues, Paul Weiss was targeted with a Trump executive order that was later rescinded once the firm struck a deal.
Since then, a number of its highest-profile partners have left. Former Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson, for example, quietly retired:
reuters.com/legal/governme…
Johnson's retirement was then followed by the departure of litigation department co-chair Karen Dunn, who along with three other highly-regarded partners, formed a litigation boutique called Dunn Isaacson Rhee.
And now Williams--and it bears mention that of the 6 partners to retire or leave, only one (Bill Isaacson) is a white guy. From a law student recruitment standpoint, that those jumping ship are almost entirely female and/or people of color is, well, not great.
That Williams chose Jenner is also notable, if somewhat predictable. Jenner was another target of Trump's executive orders--but like Wilmer Hale, Perkins Coie, and Susman Godfrey, it fought back in court.
There are lessons here not just for lawyers and law students, but also for law firms. If you can't keep your brightest, most productive talent, who's going to service those clients who purportedly would have fled had you held firm? Stay tuned.

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More from @lawofruby

Lisa Rubin Profile picture
May 20
NEW: While the Department of Justice issued a statement last night about the criminal charges against Rep. McIver, a spokesperson for her legal team confirms that it did not receive the charging document for until this morning, 12-plus hours later. 1/
DOJ policy, as embodied in the Justice Manual, is clear: "DOJ personnel shall not respond to questions about the existence of an ongoing investigation or comment on its nature or progress before charges are publicly filed." 2/
There are exceptions, including "[w]hen the community needs to be reassured that the appropriate law enforcement agency is investigating a matter, or where release of information is necessary to protect the public safety," but neither is relevant here. 3/
Read 7 tweets
Lisa Rubin Profile picture
May 14
Harvard researcher Kseniia Petrova has been charged criminally with smuggling goods -- e.g., frog embryos and samples thereof -- into the United States on the same day the judge overseeing her habeas case questioned the government's authority to revoke her visa. 1/
The administration told that judge, Christina Reiss, they intend to send Petrova back to Russia, despite her fear of arrest due to her support for Ukraine. Reiss scheduled a bail hearing on May 28, "potentially setting the stage for Ms. Petrova’s release." 2/ ...nytimes.com/2025/05/14/h
At some point today, the administration moved to unseal its criminal complaint against Petrova in a Massachusetts federal court and represented she has been arrested. 3/ Image
Read 6 tweets
Lisa Rubin Profile picture
Apr 2
There's been significant focus today on what the opinion dismissing the criminal case against Eric Adams says about Trump's DOJ. But what it says about the career prosecutors involved is as, if not more, significant. 1/
The Adams debacle resulted in the resignation of two prosecutors, then-acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon and AUSA Hagan Scotten, both former SCOTUS clerks and all-around superstars. And DOJ placed three other members of the core case team on administrative leave. 2/
In a now-public memo, DOJ told Sassoon they would be investigated by DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility and pursuant to Trump's executive order directing the A.G. to investigate "weaponization of justice" and to issue a report. 3/
Read 10 tweets
Lisa Rubin Profile picture
Jan 21
I want to live in a world where we do not talk about judges as if they owe their allegiance, or their very existence, to a particular president. Based on my experience as both a litigator and a journalist, that describes the vast majority of the federal judiciary. 1/
And yet, Judge Aileen Cannon, for all of her credentials and pre-judicial experience, has consistently staged the hearing of motions in a way that favors Trump and his co-defendants, handpicked a theory of dismissal at the invitation-by-concurrence of Justice Thomas, and even exercised jurisdiction she did not have. 2/
Her actions concerning the Special Counsel’s report, for example, were premised on authority she had stripped herself of by dismissing the case and an eventuality she refused to acknowledge: that the indictment against the two people who would supposedly be prejudiced by the report’s release not only had been dismissed but that DOJ’s pending appeal of her ruling will soon disappear too.
Read 6 tweets
Lisa Rubin Profile picture
Jan 16
NEW: Per @adamreisstv, Rudy Giuliani is now almost 90 minutes late for a one-day trial on whether his Palm Beach, FL condo can be taken to satisfy his $146 million debt to former GA election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. 1/
Rudy owes the women that money because his failure to participate in their defamation lawsuit was so complete that they won a default judgment on liability. And when they tried the issue of damages to a jury last December, that $146 million was the jury’s award. 2/
Since then, he has been playing games with several courts in an attempt to conceal or even exclude his assets from being seized to pay them. He first filed for bankruptcy, only to have his case kicked out of court for his obfuscation and withholding of information. 3/
Read 7 tweets
Lisa Rubin Profile picture
Jan 14
🧵: In October 2024, @SenWhitehouse released a report about the FBI's supplemental investigation of Brett Kavanaugh after allegations that he sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford surfaced. 1/

whitehouse.senate.gov/wp-content/upl…
And that report caused Whitehouse to find that the FBI's supplemental investigation was deeply flawed and manipulated by the Trump White House despite public attestations that the FBI had carte blanche to pursue all investigative leads. 2/
In his conclusion, Whitehouse noted, "Reliable background investigations of judicial nominees are crucial to the Senate’s constitutional duty to provide advice and consent," a statement with which I imagine most senators would concur, at least in a general sense. 3/
Read 6 tweets

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