Big Law’s Big Capitulation; The Bulwark, March 21, 2025

WILLIAM KRISTOL, 

ANDREW EGGER, AND 

JIM SWIFT

, The Bulwark ; Big Law’s Big Capitulation

"In November 2024, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP was recognized by Bloomberg Law in a special report on “Pro Bono Innovators” as a law firm “going above and beyond in delivering pro bono services.”

Yesterday Paul Weiss lived up to this praise. It went above and beyond in delivering pro bono services. The firm will be dedicating, according to the president of the United States, “the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services over the course of President Trump’s term to support the Administration’s initiatives.”

After all, President Trump only has the entire federal government at his disposal to support his initiatives. He needs and deserves the help of Paul Weiss. As the firm explains on its website, “Throughout our firm’s history, we have maintained an unwavering commitment to providing pro bono legal assistance to the most vulnerable members of our society and in support of the public interest.” How could it not step up and chip in to help this vulnerable man, Donald Trump?

The answer, of course, is that the firm could have simply said “no.” It could have refused to be extorted by the president of the United States and contested his March 14 executive order in a court of law.

But it chose capitulation. And then it couched that capitulation under the umbrella of doing “pro bono” work, as if this was a collective agreement to pursue the public interest and not the end product of a shakedown.

I won’t dilate on the details of this capitulation by Paul Weiss. You can read the New York Times’s account if you want to be depressed."

Trump Thinks He Humiliated Zelensky. He Really Humiliated the United States; The Daily Beast, March 1, 2025

David Rothkopf, The Daily Beast; Trump Thinks He Humiliated Zelensky. He Really Humiliated the United States

"The Trump-Putin Axis came fully out of the closet today. 

The new U.S. administration has clearly embraced what might be called a “mob boss” foreign policy—because of the criminal pasts of the men who are leading it and because of the tactics they appear to favor.

In an Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, Donald Trump and his dangerously ill-informed yes-man, JD Vance, the U.S. president pressed for a deal to squeeze mineral assets out of Ukraine in exchange for some ill-defined level of continued support for that country that could only be described as extortionate...

It was an ugly display of foreign policy crudeness, the likes of which we have never seen in the White House. It is tempting to call it inept. But it was not. It achieved precisely the goal that Putin and Trump had long sought, to produce a public break between the United States and Ukraine that would directly and meaningfully support Russia’s illegal, brutal conquest of its neighbor.

Trump and Vance, however, were rebuffed by Zelensky in important ways. When the Americans sought to perpetuate lies that have been a staple of Kremlin propaganda and Trump campaign speeches, Zelensky stood up to them. He refuted the idea that Ukraine provoked Russia’s invasion.

Trump has made it clear that he would stop U.S. support for Ukraine and that he was sympathetic to Putin, a man who has sought both to deny Ukraine’s right to exist and to wipe the country from the map.

Unsurprisingly, Zelensky was not cowed by the two-bit goons who confronted him...

It is surely one of the darkest days in the history of American foreign policy...

But for all the embarrassment we feel at our president, we should not lose sight of the hugely embarrassing and damaging performance of JD Vance. Vance, like Trump, had virtually every fact wrong. Furthermore, he was completely out of line addressing a foreign head of state as he did, especially one who is one of the genuinely great heroes of our era and who has been fighting courageously not just on behalf of his own people, but in defense of the ideals and interests of the U.S. and our long-time European allies."

Ransomware is a national security threat and a big business — and it’s wreaking havoc; The Washington Post, May 15, 2021

 

Ellen Nakashima and Rachel Lerman, The Washington Post; Ransomware is a national security threat and a big business — and it’s wreaking havoc

 

"But many of the actors are in countries outside the reach of U.S. and allied authorities. DarkSide, for example, is believed to be based in Russia and many of its communications are in Russian. 

 

“They’ve become the 21st century equivalent of countries that sheltered pirates,” said Daniel, the Obama White House cyber coordinator. “We have to impose diplomatic and economic consequences so they don’t see it as in their interest to harbor those criminals.”"

Mugged by a Mug Shot Online; New York Times, 10/5/13

David Segal, New York Times; Mugged by a Mug Shot Online: "It was only a matter of time before the Internet started to monetize humiliation. In this case, the time was early 2011, when mug-shot Web sites started popping up to turn the most embarrassing photograph of anyone’s life into cash. The sites are perfectly legal, and they get financial oxygen the same way as other online businesses — through credit card companies and PayPal. Some states, though, are looking for ways to curb them. The governor of Oregon signed a bill this summer that gives such sites 30 days to take down the image, free of charge, of anyone who can prove that he or she was exonerated or whose record has been expunged. Georgia passed a similar law in May. Utah prohibits county sheriffs from giving out booking photographs to a site that will charge to delete them. But as legislators draft laws, they are finding plenty of resistance, much of it from journalists who assert that public records should be just that: public. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press argues that any restriction on booking photographs raises First Amendment issues and impinges on editors’ right to determine what is newsworthy. That right was recently exercised by newspapers and Web sites around the world when the public got its first look at Aaron Alexis, the Navy Yard gunman, through a booking photograph from a 2010 arrest."