Free Speech For People, a national nonpartisan legal advocacy organization, continues to push for accountability for the firms that entered into illegal agreements with Trump and his associates to evade punitive government acts. Having previously filed legal ethics complaints against Paul Weiss, Skadden, and Kirkland, FSFP has now filed additional complaints with the Attorney Grievance Committee of the Supreme Court of the State of New York (“Committee”), seeking investigations into Latham & Watkins LLP, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, and members of the firms’ management committees who orchestrated the illegal agreements.

In these complaints, FSFP also requests that the Committee investigate whether Latham and Simpson Thacher, which respectively represented Skydance Media and Paramount Global, played any role in illegal deals made between Trump and the two companies, whose merger was approved only after both companies made extensive monetary promises and other concessions to Trump personally.

Law Firm Deals

As explained in further detail in an earlier post, Trump has abused the power of his office to target and punish certain big law firms for hiring lawyers, taking cases, and representing clients that Trump disliked. After unconstitutionally issuing, and threatening to issue, punishing executive orders and directing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to undertake baseless and invasive investigations into those law firms, Trump procured promises of nearly $1 billion in free legal services for Trump’s preferred clients and causes from nine firms, including Latham and Simpson Thacher. Four other law firms chose to fight Trump’s executive orders in court, and in all four cases, the district courts permanently blocked the orders, with the judge in one case concluding that “the Order is unconstitutional from beginning to end.” A separate lawsuit to block the EEOC investigation ended with a stipulated dismissal in which the EEOC admitted that compliance had always been voluntary and that most law firms had not responded.

Both Latham and Simpson Thacher received the EEOC investigation letters, but neither firm was ever subject to an executive order from Trump. Yet, in fear of punitive action from Trump, they both agreed to provide $125 million in pro bono support to Trump’s chosen clients and causes; to change their pro bono selection processes to better align with Trump’s priorities, specifically including “conservative ideals”; and to change their hiring, retention, and promotion practices by no longer considering diversity and inclusion. Ultimately, both firms conceded control of their resources, speech, and client selection to obtain political favor and evade or change government actions. Like other capitulating law firms Paul Weiss, Skadden, and Kirkland, Simpson Thacher may now be providing free legal work to the Commerce Department.

The complaints filed today allege that the firms violated several of key provisions of the New York’s Rules of Professional Conduct when they entered into and subsequently began to fulfill these deals, including prohibitions against attorneys and firms from engaging in illegal conduct, creating conflicts of interest, compromising their professional judgment, and inducing others to violate ethics rules.

Paramount-Skydance Merger

In October 2024, Trump brought a meritless lawsuit against Paramount, claiming that its subsidiary CBS deceptively edited its interview with Vice President Kamala Harris in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election. At first, Paramount vigorously defended itself, filing, in March 2025, a motion to dismiss and legal memorandum that pointedly rejected Trump’s brazen attack on CBS’s journalistic freedom:

This lawsuit is an affront to the First Amendment and is without basis in law or fact. Plaintiffs President Donald J. Trump and Representative Ronny Jackson, public officials at the highest ranks of our government, seek to punish a news organization for constitutionally protected editorial judgments they do not like.

However, Trump and his Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr had authority to approve or reject Paramount’s then-pending merger with Skydance, valued at $8.4 billion—approval that Carr withheld for months, apparently for political reasons.

Just a few months after filing its motion to dismiss, Paramount abruptly agreed to pay $16 million toward President Trump’s attorney fees and to fund his presidential library or purported charitable causes chosen by President Trump in order to settle the lawsuit. Trump also claimed that Paramount and Skydance made additional promises to Trump, separate from the settlement, namely that Skydance would contribute $20 million in advertising, public service announcements, or similar programing to President Trump; it would hire an ombudsman at CBS News to investigate complaints of political bias, and end its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at Paramount. Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has not denied the $20 million side deal.

The newly merged company fulfilled many of these promises. CBS hired Kenneth Weinstein as their ombudsman, a former head of a conservative think tank and Trump donor with little background in journalism. CBS also now requires Face the Nation to air only live or prerecorded but unedited interviews. In December 2025, Bari Weiss, hand-picked by Ellison to be CBS’s Editor-in-Chief, pulled a segment on Trump’s deportations to CECOT last minute, raising more concerns that the network was tailoring its coverage to appeal to the Trump administration.

Like the law firms, Paramount and Skydance provided Trump with political and personal benefits in order to extract specific government action and favor in clearing their expensive merger, constituting bribery and extortion under federal law. Their capitulation will have far-reaching consequences, leaving one of the country’s largest media companies subject to partisan oversight, chilling the freedom of press, and limiting Americans’ access to fair, credible news sources.

Latham represented Skydance and Simpson Thacher represented Paramount in the merger deal, which included the regulatory approval process. Because there has been no investigation into the deals that the companies made with Trump and his administration, it is not known whether these firms played a role in facilitating or negotiating the illegal deals; it is imperative that New York’s Attorney Grievance Committee conduct its own investigation to determine whether any New York barred attorneys facilitated bribery deals in violation of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct.

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The Committee has deferred investigation of FSFP’s other complaints until other firms’ legal challenges to Trump’s unlawful executive orders have been resolved. FSFP files these complaints now for two reasons: first, because the merger-related investigation request is unique to these firms; and second, because the outcome of the court case does not bear upon the question of whether any firm unlawfully provided Trump or his associates with concessions to obtain or evade government action.

Attorneys must retain and guard their freedom to select clients, represent them to the best of their ability, and meet their ethical obligations at every step of that representation. Without attorney independence and ethical representation, judges and juries will not have access to the best and most fulsome legal arguments and presentations of evidence. If counsel is afraid of or beholden to opposing parties, clients may not be able to obtain representation or be sure they are getting the best advice. And if our country’s most powerful law firms capitulate to abusive government officials and participate in illegal deals with corrupt government officials, then the United States loses a necessary mechanism for holding the government accountable to the Constitution, the law, and the people. It is why independence and rigorous adherence to ethical obligations are built into New York’s Rules of Professional Conduct, and why firms must be held up to these standards now more than ever.

Read the ethics complaint against Latham here. 

Read the ethics complaint against Simpson Thacher here. 

Read the ethics complaint against Skadden here.

Read the ethics complaint against Kirkland here.

Read the ethics complaint against Paul Weiss here.

Read the Committee’s response to complaints against Paul Weiss, Skadden, and Kirkland here.