A top law firm chairman’s controversial capitulation to President Donald Trump’s demands created staunch internal divisions, according to a new bombshell report.
At the start of his second presidency, Trump signed an executive order targeting top law firms, including Paul Weiss, as he was irate that they represented his political opponents or had attorneys who had been involved in investigations against him.
Brad Karp, the ousted chairman at the Paul Weiss law firm, tried and failed to please the firm’s employees in the weeks after the order came down as he attempted to strike a deal with the White House rather than challenge it in court, a new report in the New York Times details.
Ahead of the meeting, the Times reported that Karp recruited New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, a friend of Trump’s, to help him ahead of their meeting with Trump. Kraft reportedly vouched for Karp in a call with the president and passed along Trump’s phone number to Karp.
Karp then repeatedly called Trump for two days before the president picked up, and an Oval Office meeting was arranged.
The meeting went on for several hours, during which Trump complained about how he believed Paul Weiss had wronged him. He expressed his discontent that E. Jean Carroll, in her quest to find Trump liable for sexual abuse against her, had been represented by a former Paul Weiss partner.
During the meeting, Karp drew a red line with the president, as he said the firm would not relitigate the 2020 election.
Back at the office, there was enthusiasm to get a deal done with the administration, the Times reported. When Karp presented an outline of the deal during a meeting with Paul Weiss partners, there were no objections. Under the deal, the firm agreed to take on $40 million in free legal work for causes that were supported by both the firm and Trump.
Karp asserted to employees that the firm would still maintain its independence, but when Trump announced the deal on Truth Social, he put his own spin on it. Trump proclaimed that Paul Weiss had agreed to “not adopt, use, or pursue any DEI policies,” and that “Karp acknowledged the wrongdoing of former Paul, Weiss partner, Mark Pomerantz, the grave dangers of Weaponization, and the vital need to restore our System of Justice.”
Karp was reportedly stunned by Trump’s embellishments, writing in an email to colleagues, “I cannot believe this. He changed the agreement, added a no-DEI provision, and came up with a completely false quote saying I acknowledged things I never said. My god.”
But Karp never publicly showed his annoyance with the president’s embellishments, and the deal received massive blowback in the press.
After that, the deal with the Trump administration was not well-received by prominent attorneys at the firm. At the same time, Trump allies began gloating about the deal.
Longtime Trump lawyer Boris Epshteyn told his friend, “I’m in a pretty good place now. I’m the chairman of Paul Weiss,” according to Regime Change by Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
Staff was also irate that around the time of the White House deal, the firm took down Paul Weiss’s website for the Center to Combat Hate, which detailed their work litigating cases against the organizers of a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville and the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers for their role in the Jan. 6 insurrection attempt.
After much internal strife, the website ultimately went back up, but omitted any mention of the suits against the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers over their role in Jan. 6, the Times reported.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Paul Weiss for comment.
Several high-profile attorneys at the firm ultimately left as a result of the deal and the other public fiascos.
But what appeared to be the final nail in the coffin for Karp’s time leading the firm was his previously undisclosed relationship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, which was outed by Trump’s Department of Justice. While Karp had told his colleagues that his name would appear in the DOJ-released “Epstein Files,” he did not appear to be entirely forthcoming about the extent of their relationship.
One document showed Karp advising Epstein in 2019, the year he was indicted for federal sex crimes, even though Epstein was not a client of the firm. One of the documents showed an email in which Karp advised Epstein on a legal filing responding to some women who had accused Epstein of abusing them when they were minors.
“The draft motion is in great shape. It’s overwhelmingly persuasive. Truly,” Mr. Karp wrote to Mr. Epstein. “I particularly liked the argument that the ‘victims’ lied in wait and sat on their rights for their strategic advantage, knowing you were in prison, before they came forward,” Mr. Karp added.
The Times reported that Karp was forced to step down as chairman shortly after the Epstein revelations as staff determined that he was a liability to the firm.
