From Trump To Epstein, How Brad Karp Lost His Grip On Law Firm Paul Weiss | EUROtoday

Feb 7 (Reuters) – Brad Karpthe chairman of high-powered U.S. legislation agency Paul Weiss, joined different distinguished Democratic fundraisers at election night time gatherings in Washington in November 2024 hoping for a Kamala Harris victory over Republican rival Donald Trump.

Karp had reached out to a whole lot of company attorneys in a fundraising push for Harris quickly after she changed incumbent Joe Biden because the Democratic presidential candidate in July 2024, and one among his Paul Weiss companions helped put together the previous U.S. vp for her debate with Trump.

But Trump received the election. And his return to the presidency final 12 months set in movement a sequence of occasions that first shook Paul Weiss and later, with the U.S. Justice Department’s launch of information involving the late financier and convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein, led Karp to resign this week as its chairman.

Though he has not been accused of wrongdoing, the disclosures of his contacts with Epstein undid in a matter of days Karp’s longstanding grip over the agency that had cemented him as a Wall Street and Washington energy dealer.

“If you were going to write a Greek tragedy about a law firm leader, this is it,” a former senior Paul Weiss legal professional advised Reuters, talking on situation of anonymity.

After turning into chairman of Paul Weiss in 2008, Karp reworked it from a revered New York litigation agency to a big-money international powerhouse. And Paul Weiss attorneys and workers outpaced different main legislation corporations in donations to Democrats through the 2024 election cycle.

Paul Weiss devoted professional bono work to progressive causes and recruited star Wall Street dealmakers alongside litigators who had served in Democratic former President Barack Obama’s administration.

Trump’s return to the White House rapidly created tumult for Karp and his agency. Karp’s subsequent resolution to chop a take care of Trump to rescind an government order the president had issued punishing the agency made him the face of capitulation for some attorneys aligned with the Democratic Party.

At least a dozen companions, together with the one who had suggested Harris for her presidential debate, departed the agency afterward.

A bipartisan push in Congress final 12 months, regardless of Trump’s objections, required the Justice Department to launch information associated to Epstein. A trove of emails made public on the finish of January revealed intensive communications between Karp and Epstein, prompting him to resign as chairman.

Karp didn’t reply to requests for remark. The agency didn’t reply to a request for remark past the assertion it launched on Wednesday saying his resignation.

In that assertion, Karp stated that “recent reporting has created a distraction and has placed a focus on me that is not in the best interests of the firm.” The agency beforehand had stated he regretted his Epstein interactions and “never witnessed or participated in misconduct.”

Karpwhose rolodex of representations has included massive Wall Street banks and the National Football League, stays at Paul Weiss serving shoppers, the agency stated in its assertion. Karp was changed as chairman by Scott Barshay, who he had recruited in 2016 to turbocharge the agency’s mergers and acquisitions observe and different company work.

Founded in 1875 by Samuel William Weiss and Julius Frank, the agency constructed a fame as a defender of civil liberties. In the Forties, it grew to become the primary main New York agency to call a feminine accomplice. It assisted civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall within the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education that declared racial segregation in public faculties unconstitutional.

Karp joined Paul Weiss as a summer season affiliate in 1983 and spent his total profession on the agency, rising to steer the litigation division earlier than being elected chairman. Under his management, Paul Weiss grew to become a major defender of the monetary business, representing shoppers comparable to Citigroup and JPMorgan whereas sustaining deep ties to the Democratic institution.

Over time, Karp confirmed a capability to develop shut relationships and construct consensus that allowed him to draw star rainmakers, propelling Paul Weiss to a top-tier agency with loyal institutional shoppers and main litigation and transactional practices, in line with Kent Zimmermann, an adviser to legislation corporations who interviewed Karp for an upcoming e-book.

In recruiting Barshay, Karp elevated the agency’s dealmaking firepower.

Karp regularly used Paul Weiss sources to problem the primary Trump administration and accomplice with civil rights and advocacy teams. The agency helped lead litigation following the 2017 white supremacist demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, and took part in lawsuits towards the firearms business.

In 2018, Karp mobilized attorneys to fight Trump’s household separation coverage on the U.S. border.

Karp additionally represented Leon Black, the co-founder of Apollo Global Management, a big Wall Street funding agency. Epstein grew to become concerned in payment disputes with Black. Karp’s communications with Epstein regarding Black and different issues would in the end contribute to the legislation agency chief’s resignation.

Paul Weiss employed attorneys who investigated Trump and sued contributors within the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by the president’s supporters of their failed effort to stop congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory. On the day of the riot, Karp stated he watched in horror “as the disgraceful results of this attempted coup spilled into the hallowed halls of Congress.”

That made the agency a goal when Trump returned to the presidency in January 2025. In March, Trump signed an government order blacklisting Paul Weiss from federal buildings and authorities contracts, a part of a sequence of such directives geared toward numerous legislation corporations that the president considered as adversaries.

“The shifts he was able to achieve in the firm were the precise things that created the vulnerabilities Trump was able to exploit,” stated Scott Cummings, a authorized ethics professor at UCLA School of Law.

Fearing the order would immediate a shopper exodus and destroy the 150-year-old agency, Karp sought a settlement with Trump.

He arrived at a White House assembly within the Oval Office that started with a chronic dialogue of golf. Sullivan & Cromwell co-chair Robert Giuffra, a Republican and Trump lawyer, was patched into the assembly by telephone and later helped Karp negotiate a deal to rescind the chief order in change for $40 million of free authorized work for causes the president supported.

Eight different corporations subsequently reached comparable offers with the administration to keep away from Trump government orders, pledging work price practically $1 billion mixed. Four different legislation corporations that Trump focused with government orders sued and received court docket rulings hanging down the directives as unconstitutional.

Karp was a generational chief who molded Paul Weiss right into a extremely worthwhile and elite competitor within the non-public fairness authorized market, in line with Kevin Burke, a professor on the University of Southern California Gould School of Law who himself as soon as led a legislation agency.

“What ultimately makes this episode a cautionary tale is how even highly successful leadership can falter when institutional independence is compromised by proximity to executive power,” Burke stated. “In a period marked by aggressive executive action and regulatory leverage, Paul Weiss’ decision to settle early and visibly engage with the administration created a perception of accommodation rather than resistance – one that stood in tension with the firm’s historic identity.”

Karp met Epstein by means of his illustration of Black, the agency stated. Records launched by the Justice Department documented Karp thanking Epstein for a “once in a lifetime” dinner in 2015 with Woody Allen and later in search of Epstein’s help in securing a job for his son engaged on one of many director’s movie productions.

Other emails confirmed Karp and Epstein discussing a girl demanding cash from Black. Emails additionally confirmed them discussing Epstein’s non-prosecution settlement reached in 2008, when the financier pleaded responsible to prostitution expenses in Florida, together with soliciting an underage woman.

The emails indicated the 2 remained involved as just lately as early 2019, months earlier than Epstein’s arrest on intercourse trafficking expenses and subsequent suicide in a Manhattan jail whereas awaiting trial.

(Reporting by Mike Spector in New York and David Thomas in Chicago; Additional reporting by Mike Scarcella; Editing by David Bario and Will Dunham)