A new executive order calls on the Justice Department to “unleash” police across the country.
One provision calls for law firms to provide pro bono assistance to officers who get sued.
It’s not clear how much of the order is legally or practically possible.
The Trump administration will seek to enlist private sector law firms to defend police officers “unjustly” accused of wrongdoing.
In an executive order signed Monday, President Donald Trump instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to help defend police officers named in civil rights lawsuits. According to the order, whatever system the Justice Department creates “shall include the use of private-sector pro bono assistance for such law enforcement officers.”
The order does not explicitly direct any particular law firm to do anything. However, following previous executive orders targeting a number of elite firms, nine have agreed to deals with the president and collectively agreed to provide $940 million in pro bono legal services to support the president’s priorities.
The effect of the order is unclear. Police officers who get sued are normally defended by their department or by their union.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Law firms that have struck deals with the administration have described them as a way of preventing or resolving allegations by Trump that could make their clients flighty and threaten the firms’ bottom lines.
Critics of the deals — and four law firms that have sued Trump over them — call them unconstitutional. They have so far been successful at limiting their reach. One firm, Susman Godfrey, made the decision to fight the administration in just two hours, Business Insider previously reported.
The terms of the deals that Trump has posted on Truth Social generally give the firms an indefinite period to honor their obligations. The firms that have struck deals have also emphasized that they wouldn’t have to take a client just because Trump said so.
In public statements and with Monday’s executive order, Trump has suggested that law firms quickly get to work on helping his administration and its allies on all sorts of cases — from negotiating trade deals and coal leases to, now, representing police officers in lawsuits.
There are about 1.2 million police officers in the US employed by state and local governments, and over 136,000 who work for federal law enforcement agencies. They collectively face thousands of lawsuits and legal claims every year related to their work.
Though police sometimes pay their own legal defense costs, it’s more common for their employers or unions to pay them. Judgments against police officers are almost always paid by someone else; officers themselves paid just 0.02% of the $735 million awarded to people who sued over constitutional violations and injuries, according to a 2020 study in the UCLA Law Review.
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