{"id":40678,"date":"2025-03-29T13:23:15","date_gmt":"2025-03-29T20:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=40678"},"modified":"2025-03-29T13:23:16","modified_gmt":"2025-03-29T20:23:16","slug":"high-profile-san-francisco-law-firm-stands-up-to-trump-courage-to-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/03\/29\/high-profile-san-francisco-law-firm-stands-up-to-trump-courage-to-fight\/","title":{"rendered":"High-profile San Francisco law firm stands up to Trump: \u2018Courage to fight\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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John Keker, co-founder and partner of the law firm Keker, Van Nest & Peters, says the legal community must stand up to President Donald Trump\u2019s attacks on lawyers and judges. His firm is one of the first in the nation to respond to Trump\u2019s actions.Minh Connors\/For the S.F. Chronicle<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Bob Egelko<\/a>, Courts Reporter March 28, 2025 (SFChronicle.com)<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As President Donald Trump moves to punish law firms that criticize or oppose him \u2014 revoking their security clearances, canceling government contracts, denying their attorneys access to federal buildings \u2014 one San Francisco firm is speaking up, regardless of the consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019d had it up to my gills with all these attacks on lawyers and judges,\u201d Elliot Peters, a partner at Keker, Van Nest & Peters, said Thursday. \u201cToo many law firms are silent, and the risks right now to the legal profession and to the country are too great.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peters drafted the statement that was reviewed, approved by other partners, and issued publicly Saturday. It was one of the first such responses by a U.S. law firm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s order to his Justice Department to penalize his legal opponents shows \u201chow far removed this President, Attorney General and Administration are from our nation\u2019s Constitution and bedrock values,\u201d the statement said. \u201cOur liberties depend on lawyers\u2019 willingness to represent unpopular people and causes, including in matters adverse to the Federal Government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some people in the legal community \u201care scared of what might happen to them if they speak out,\u201d said attorney John Keker, who co-founded the firm in 1978. But he and his partners concluded that \u201cif there\u2019s adverse consequences, so be it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf people don\u2019t stand up and fight \u2026 President Trump will have his way and bring down the rule of law in the United States,\u201d Keker said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so far, the lawyers said, the response has been uniformly favorable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m getting texts, emails, phone calls from other lawyers, retired judges, non-lawyers, old friends I hadn\u2019t heard from in 10 years, clients,\u201d Peters said. \u201cNobody\u2019s fired us or criticized us. A couple of potential new clients contacted us\u00a0\u2014 they\u2019re looking for attorneys who have the courage to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump hasn\u2019t responded to the San Francisco firm. But on Thursday, he ordered penalties against a fifth major firm, WilmerHale, because one of its lawyers was Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who was assigned by Trump\u2019s Justice Department in 2017 to investigate allegations of collusion between Trump\u2019s campaign and Russia in the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mueller found there had been many contacts between the campaign and the Russian government, which secretly worked to support his election, but not enough evidence to charge Trump with wrongdoing. Trump\u2019s executive order Thursday said Mueller\u2019s investigation \u201cepitomizes the weaponization of government\u201d and justified sanctions against the law firm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of his earlier targets was the Perkins Coie law firm, which has represented Hillary Clinton, Trump\u2019s Democratic opponent in 2016. Keker\u2019s firm filed legal arguments in support of Perkins Coie, and a federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from penalizing the law firm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keker, Van Nest & Peters handles civil and criminal cases and has 140 attorneys. The firm represented Santa Clara County in a suit by local governments that blocked the Trump administration\u2019s attempt in 2020 to withhold federal funds<\/a> from sanctuary cities and counties that refused to hold undocumented immigrants in custody and turn them over to immigration officers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The law firm\u2019s alumni include California Attorney General Rob Bonta, former U.S. Attorney Ismael Ramsey, and U.S. District Judges Vince Chhabria and Jon Tigar of San Francisco, and one who has been in the news lately, Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boasberg, appointed by President Barack Obama, infuriated Trump by ruling on March 15 that the president had illegally ordered the deportation of more than 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador after claiming, without evidence, that they were members of a gang conducting an \u201cinvasion\u201d of the United States. A federal appeals court upheld his ruling Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s administration has disregarded the judge\u2019s orders to bring the Venezuelans back, and Trump described Boasberg on social media as a \u201cRadical Left Lunatic\u201d and called for his impeachment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peters joined the law firm in 1991, the same year Boasberg began a three-year stint at the firm. Boasberg is \u201ca first-class person and a first-class judge,\u201d he said, and it\u2019s \u201coffensive to describe him as a lunatic or call for his impeachment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By targeting law firms, Keker said, Trump is taking on a profession that is not at the top of the charts in public esteem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The public\u2019s image of lawyers, he said, \u201cis not wonderful until you need one and get a good one who\u2019s going to protect you. Then they like their lawyers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reach Bob Egelko: begelko@sfchronicle.com<\/a>; X: @BobEgelko<\/p>\n\n\n\n

March 28, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bob Egelko<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COURTS REPORTER<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bob Egelko has been a reporter since June 1970. He spent 30 years with the Associated Press, covering news, politics and occasionally sports in Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento, and legal affairs in San Francisco from 1984 onward. He worked for the San Francisco Examiner for five months in 2000, then joined The Chronicle in November 2000.His beat includes state and federal courts in California, the Supreme Court and the State Bar. He has a law degree from McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento and is a member of the bar. Coverage has included the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, the appointment of Rose Bird to the state Supreme Court and her removal by the voters, the death penalty in California and the battles over gay rights and same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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John Keker, co-founder and partner of the law firm Keker, Van Nest & Peters, says the legal community must stand up to President Donald Trump\u2019s attacks on lawyers and judges. His firm is one of the first in the nation to respond to Trump\u2019s actions.Minh Connors\/For the S.F. Chronicle By\u00a0Bob… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40678"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40680,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40678\/revisions\/40680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}