Trump orders suspension of security clearances from law firm behind debunked Steele Dossier

President Donald Trump has ordered the suspension of any active security clearances held by lawyers at the law firm that assisted Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign in funding the debunked and anti-Trump Steele Dossier.

Trump’s new order directed the pulling of security clearances from the notorious firm, limited the hiring of lawyers from the legal outfit, and placed other limitations on the firm’s access to classified information. 

Marc Elias, a former Perkins Coie lawyer who served as general counsel for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, played a key role in the funding and spreading British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited anti-Trump dossier, which was used to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against a former member of the Trump campaign.

“The dishonest and dangerous activity of the law firm Perkins Coie LLP has affected this country for decades,” Trump said in his new executive order. “Notably, in 2016 while representing failed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS, which then manufactured a false ‘dossier’ designed to steal an election.”

Then-FBI Director James Comey also fought to include information from Steele’s dossier in the January 2017 intelligence community assessment on alleged Russian election meddling. Comey also briefed then-President-elect Trump about the dossier’s most salacious allegations during a meeting at Trump Tower in January 2017.

An investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller “did not establish” any criminal Trump-Russia collusion. DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz found huge flaws with the FBI’s investigation, criticizing the “central and essential” role of the dossier in the FBI’s politicized FISA surveillance of former Trump campaign associate Carter Page.

Trump’s executive order said that Attorney General Pam Bondi and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard “shall immediately take steps … to suspend any active security clearances held by individuals at Perkins Coie, pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.”

After the 2016 election, Elias went on to serve also as the general counsel for now-former Vice President Kamala Harris’s failed 2020 presidential bid. Perkins Coie announced in 2021 Elias and others were leaving to form Elias Law Group.

Trump’s new executive order argued: “Perkins Coie has worked with activist donors including George Soros to judicially overturn popular, necessary, and democratically enacted election laws, including those requiring voter identification. In one such case, a court was forced to sanction Perkins Coie attorneys for an unethical lack of candor before the court.”

Elias was hit with sanctions in 2021 by federal appeals court judges for a “redundant and misleading submission” and for violating his ethical “duty of candor” to the court in a case in which the Democratic Party was challenging a state law that banned straight-ticket voting. 

Trump also ordered that all government contractors must “disclose any business they do with Perkins Coie and whether that business is related to the subject of the government contract” in order to prevent the transfer of taxpayer dollars to federal contractors whose earnings subsidize “falsified documents designed to weaponize the Government against candidates for office” and “anti-democratic election changes that invite fraud and distrust.”

The president also said that federal agencies should limit official access from federal government buildings to Perkins Coie “when such access would threaten the national security of or otherwise be inconsistent with the interests of the United States” and that these agencies should “refrain from hiring employees of Perkins Coie” absent a waiver stating that “such hire will not threaten the national security of the United States.”

John Durham’s special counsel inquiry further undercut the dossier’s credibility and resulted in indictments against Steele’s primary source, Igor Danchenko, as well as against Elias’s former Perkins Coie law partner, Michael Sussmann, with whom Elias worked closely in 2016. Danchenko and Sussmann were found not guilty at trial.

Durham’s indictment against Sussmann centered on a September 2016 meeting with then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in which Sussmann passed along debunked allegations claiming there was a secret back channel between Russia’s Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization. Durham alleged that Sussmann told Baker he was not working for any specific client, but Durham said Sussmann was secretly doing the bidding of Clinton’s presidential campaign. Durham said Elias was also involved in pushing the false Alfa Bank claims.

Sussmann, who represented the Democratic National Committee when it was purportedly hacked in 2016, was acquitted after a two-week trial by a jury in the nation’s capital in 2022.

Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan sent a letter to then-FBI Director Christopher Wray in 2022 noting that he had “learned that since March 2012, the FBI approved and facilitated a Secure Work Environment at Perkins Coie’s Washington, D.C., office, which continues to be operational.” 

Jordan added that he had “been informed that former Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann had access to this Secure Work Environment, and during the course of his recent trial, it was disclosed he had special badge access to FBI headquarters.”

Trump’s new executive order said that “the Office of Management and Budget shall identify all Government goods, property, material, and services, including Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, provided for the benefit of Perkins Coie” and that the heads of federal agencies should “expeditiously cease” any such arrangements.