General Discussion

But with Susman Godfrey, it’s not quite as obvious — and while the official order was over 900 words long, none went into detail about the firm’s alleged transgressions. (The order noted that Susman Godfrey “administers a program where it offers financial awards and employment opportunities only to ‘students of color,’” which Team Trump apparently finds outrageous, though this hardly warranted an aggressive response from the Oval Office.)

So why did Trump target this specific firm? Many of the news reports about the executive order noted that Susman Godfrey represented Dominion Voting Systems in the defamation case against Fox News, and it seems plausible that the president would want to punish a firm that clashed with a politically aligned media outlet.

Reuters’ report noted that Susman Godfrey “is also representing Dominion in defamation lawsuits against the president’s former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, and others related to false claims that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump.”

It’s also of interest that firm represents The New York Times in its copyright suit against OpenAI and Microsoft.

But let’s also not forget that it was just last month when Media Matters filed suit against Elon Musk’s X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter), and the progressive media watchdog is represented in the case by — you guessed it — Susman Godfrey.

To be sure, I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that Trump signed an order targeting the firm at the behest of his top campaign donor, but as the dispute unfolds, it’s a detail worth keeping in mind.