Turns Out Lawyers Despise Trump. Especially His Own.

Oh, hai, Don McGahn!

(Photo by Evan Vucci-Pool/Getty Images)

We hate him. We really, really hate him.

Reuters analyzed FEC disclosures to see whether lawyers were clicking “Donate” at ActBlue or WinRed. Unsurprisingly, the party that is currently burning down the Justice Department and smashing all political and professional norms is doing significantly worse with the counselor class.

Reuters reports that the Biden campaign raked in almost $29 million from lawyers from January 2019 through August of this year, compared to just $1.75 million for Trump. Those are just individual attorneys’ contributions to the campaigns directly, capped at $5,600 between the primary and general, and don’t include contributions to PACs or party committees.

Morgan & Morgan leads the pack with $369,127 for Biden during the period, followed by Covington & Burling at $240,564 and Sidley Austin at $230,686.

Attorneys at Fish & Richardson, Trump’s biggest supporters, could spare only $11,355 for the President, and they appear to have hedged their bets with equivalent donations to Biden as well. Even Attorney General Barr’s old partners at Kirkland & Ellis only kicked up $10,840 for his boss in the relevant period. Although, according to Open Secrets’ database, the running tally for all employees at the firm is currently at $364,283 for Biden, and $25,202 for Trump.

Worst of all, the lawyers who know Trump best — or at least the ones who take the most of his money — don’t like him either. During the 2020 campaign cycle, Jones Day was paid $11,806,685 by Republican candidates, committees, and PACs. The Trump campaign shelled out upwards of $4.5 million of that, with the RNC paying another $3.2 million. Nonetheless, lawyers at the firm sent only $50 dollars (no, we didn’t leave off a couple of zeroes) to the Trump campaign, and $90,000 to Biden.

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Hey, isn’t that former White House Counsel Don McGahn’s firm with the 1,800:1 Biden-Trump donation ratio? Incidentally, none of that cash came from McGahn himself, whose only donations appear to be $2,800 to WinRed and $2,800 to Susan Collins. (His wife didn’t donate to the president either.)

Trump’s personal attorneys are only slightly less appalled at their most famous client — but only slightly. The ratio of donations from Kasowitz Benson Torres and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius is about 10:1 in favor of the former Vice President.

“It shouldn’t be news that rich, liberal lawyers in Biden’s pocket are desperately trying to make up for his lackluster candidacy or that every big law firm has lawyers on both sides of the political aisle,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Samantha Zager snarked to Reuters.

Which tells you exactly what she and her boss think of our community. And considering the publicly available information at the FEC, the feeling is apparently mutual.

Lawyers spurn Trump campaign in individual donations, including from Jones Day [Reuters]

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.