President Donald Trump ordered his administration to take action against a top law firm linked to the infamous Steele Dossier, a now-discredited intelligence report alleging then-candidate Trump colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential election.
The report also made the salacious—and unproven—allegation that Trump watched a pair of prostitutes urinate on a bed at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel that Barack and Michelle Obama had previously slept in.
Trump’s executive order, signed Thursday, is the culmination of a years-long grudge against the report’s authors and backers, including Perkins Coie, a white-shoe international law firm targeted by name.
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It officially revoked security clearances for Perkins Coie employees and limited their access to federal buildings. He also instructed agencies not to hire Perkins Coie staff and terminated any contracts between the government and the law firm.
The president accused Perkins Coie of “dishonest and dangerous activity” and unfair hiring practices. He also ordered a review of the diversity, equity, and inclusion practices of top law firms.
“This is an absolute honor to sign,” Trump said at the White House as he signed the order. “What they’ve done is just terrible. It’s weaponization, you could say weaponization against a political opponent, and it should never be allowed to happen again.”
Perkins Coie said in a statement that the order “is patently unlawful, and we intend to challenge it,” according to The New York Times.
Last month, Trump signed a similar order targeting Covington & Burling, the law firm representing former special counsel Jack Smith, who investigated the president’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots and his handling of classified documents at the end of his first term.
Trump’s disdain for the Democratic Party-linked Perkins Coie dates back to the 2016 presidential election, when lawyers Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann—who are no longer employed by the firm—hired the research company Fusion GPS to investigate Trump’s business relationships overseas.
Fusion GPS produced the Steele Dossier, a sketchy document assembled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele which accused Trump of colluding with Russia to win the 2016 election over Hillary Clinton.
It was later revealed that Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded the Steele Dossier. Federal elections regulators fined Democrats in 2022 over their failure to disclose the money they spent on the opposition research.
One of the dossier’s most explosive allegations—more commonly known as the “pee tape” or “golden showers tape”—claimed that Trump hired Moscow prostitutes in 2013 to urinate on a hotel bed once slept in by the Obamas.
The allegations have since been seared into the public consciousness, as well as Trump’s.
During the presidential campaign last year, Trump told supporters in Iowa that he had denied having a “golden showers” kink to his wife, Melania.
“Actually that one she didn’t believe because she said, ‘He’s a germaphobe, he’s not into that,’” Trump said in November. “‘He’s not into golden showers,’ as they say they called it. I don’t like that idea. No, I didn’t. I thought that would be a big problem, I was going to have a rough night, but that one she was very good on.”
