WASHINGTON (AP) — A law firm targeted by President Donald Trump over its legal services during the 2016 presidential campaign sued the federal government Tuesday over an executive order that seeks to strip its attorneys of security clearances.
The order, which Trump signed last week, was designed to punish Perkins Coie by suspending the security clearances of the firm's lawyers as well as denying firm employees access to federal buildings and terminating their federal contracts.
It was the latest retributive action taken by Trump against the legal community, coming soon after an earlier order that targeted security clearances of lawyers at a separate law firm who have provided legal services to special counsel Jack Smith, who led criminal investigations into the Republican before his second term.
Perkins Coie represented the 2016 presidential campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Trump's opponent, and also represented Democrats in a variety of voting rights challenges during the 2020 election. The firm made headlines in 2017 when it was revealed to have hired a private investigative research firm during the 2016 campaign to conduct opposition research on Trump. That firm, Fusion GPS, subsequently retained a former British spy, Christopher Steele, who researched whether Trump and Russia had suspicious ties.
Lawyers representing Perkins Coie said in their lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, that the executive order was an illegal act of retaliation. They called on a judge to block it from being implemented. A hearing was set for Wednesday afternoon.
The lawsuit notes that the two primary attorneys whose work appears to have most angered Trump left the firm years ago and accounted for a tiny fraction of the firm's more than 1,200 attorneys. They said the order had already hurt the firm's revenue and bottom line, noting that some clients of clients have “terminated their engagements" over the last week, and illegally discriminated against the firm based on viewpoint.
“The Order is an affront to the Constitution and our adversarial system of justice. Its plain purpose is to bully those who advocate points of view that the President perceives as adverse to the views of his Administration, whether those views are presented on behalf of paying or pro bono clients,” the lawsuit states.
Trump had sued the law firm in 2022, along with Clinton, FBI officials and other defendants, as a part of a sprawling complaint alleging a massive conspiracy to concoct the Russia investigation that shadowed much of his administration. The suit was dismissed.
President Donald Trump walks down the stairs of Air Force One upon his arrival at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Sunday, March 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched a second major drone and missile bombardment of Ukraine in four days, officials said Tuesday, aiming again at the power grid and apparently snubbing U.S.-led peace efforts as the war approaches the four-year mark.
Russia fired almost 300 drones, 18 ballistic missiles and seven cruise missiles at eight regions overnight, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media.
One strike in the northeastern Kharkiv region killed four people at a mail depot, and several hundred thousand households were without power in the Kyiv region, Zelenskyy said. The daytime temperature in the capital was -12 C (around 10 F). The streets were covered with ice, and the city rumbled with the noise from generators.
Four days earlier, Russia also sent hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles in a large-scale overnight attack and, for only the second time in the war, it used a powerful new hypersonic missile that struck western Ukraine in what appeared to be a clear warning to Kyiv’s NATO allies that it won’t back down.
On Monday, the United States accused Russia of a “ dangerous and inexplicable escalation ” of the fighting, when the Trump administration is trying to advance peace negotiations.
Tammy Bruce, the U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations, told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council that Washington deplores “the staggering number of casualties” in the conflict and condemns Russia’s intensifying attacks on energy and other infrastructure.
Russia has sought to deny Ukrainian civilians heat and running water in the freezing winter months over the course of the war, hoping to wear down public resistance to Moscow’s full-scale invasion, which began on Feb. 24, 2022. Ukrainian officials describe the strategy as “weaponizing winter.”
In Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, the Russian attack also wounded 10 people, local authorities said.
In the southern city of Odesa, six people were wounded in the attack, said Oleh Kiper, the head of the regional military administration. The strikes damaged energy infrastructure, a hospital, a kindergarten, an educational facility and a number of residential buildings, he said.
Zelenskyy said that Ukraine is counting on quicker deliveries of agreed upon air defense systems from the U.S. and Europe, as well as new pledges of aid, to counter Russia’s latest onslaught.
Meanwhile, Russian air defenses shot down 11 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said Tuesday. Seven were reportedly destroyed over Russia’s Rostov region, where Gov. Yuri Slyusar confirmed an attack on the coastal city of Taganrog, about 40 kilometers (about 24 miles) east of the Ukrainian border, in Kyiv's latest long-range attack on Russian war-related facilities.
Ukraine’s military said domestically-produced drones hit a drone manufacturing facility in Taganrog. The Atlant Aero plant carries out design, manufacturing and testing of Molniya drones and components for Orion unmanned aerial vehicles, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Explosions and a fire were reported at the site, with damage to production buildings confirmed, the General Staff said.
It wasn't possible to independently verify the reports.
Katie Marie Davies contributed to this report from Manchester, England.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, emergency services personnel work to extinguish a fire following a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, emergency services personnel work to extinguish a fire following a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, emergency services personnel work to extinguish a fire following a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, emergency services personnel work to extinguish a fire following a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, emergency services personnel work to extinguish a fire following a Russian attack in Kyiv region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
