Donald Trump has often not been well served by his lawyers. This may be partly his fault, but the reality is that historically, top law firms wouldn’t have touched Trump with a stick. For the most part, they are loyal members of the establishment, and if a firm had been bold enough to take on Trump as a client, it likely would have faced a rebellion by younger lawyers and staff.
Represent terrorists imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, or a convicted murderer slated for the death penalty? Sure. Many large firms have done it, proudly. Represent Donald Trump? Not on your life.
That is why I was stunned to see this announcement. Sullivan & Cromwell isn’t just a good law firm, it is one of New York’s most storied firms, by any measure one of the top law firms in the world:
So Trump will be represented by the co-chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell, assisted by no fewer than four former U.S. Supreme Court clerks. The New York “hush money” case was a bad joke, legally defective for multiple reasons. It wasn’t a legitimate legal prosecution, it was a nakedly political persecution. Trump’s conviction on “34 felony counts,” i.e. one allegedly incorrect bookkeeping entry, will be reversed.
But the real message here isn’t just that Trump is in good legal hands. It is that Trump’s second term is very different from his first. No longer is he persona non grata in polite society. Institutions that formerly were hostile to Trump now reflect the realization that not only are his views mainstream, they are those of the majority of the American people. Democrats can no longer assume that every elite organization will reflexively be on their side.
