Don’t do business with Trump collaborationalists

There needs to be more of this:

At a recent luncheon at Cipriani in Midtown Manhattan, a top lawyer for Citadel delivered a message to leaders of some of the country’s biggest law firms. Brooke Cucinella told them that the hedge-fund company likes to work with law firms that aren’t afraid of a fight.

Cucinella, head of litigation and regulatory inquiries at the business headed by Republican megadonor Ken Griffin, made no mention of politics. But some of the lawyers in attendance took her remarks as reference to a controversy that has been roiling the legal industry.

Some of the listed attendees worked for firms that had cut deals with the White House to avoid punitive executive orders by President Trump. Others were at law firms that had gone to court to fight them.

Support for the law firms that didn’t make deals has been growing inside the offices of corporate executives. At least 11 big companies are moving work away from law firms that settled with the administration or are giving—or intend to give—more business to firms that have been targeted but refused to strike deals, according to general counsels at those companies and other people familiar with those decisions.

Among them are technology giant Oracle, investment bank Morgan Stanley, an airline and a pharmaceutical company. Microsoft expressed reservations about working with a firm that struck a deal, and another such firm stopped representing McDonald’s in a case a few months before a scheduled trial. 

In interviews, general counsels expressed concern about whether they could trust law firms that struck deals to fight for them in court and in negotiating big deals if they weren’t willing to stand up for themselves against Trump. The general counsel of a manufacturer of medical supplies said that if firms facing White House pressure “don’t have a hard line,” they don’t have any line at all.

I note again that these firms should be denied business on principle, but as these firms recognize it’s also a matter of self-interest — who the fuck would trust who don’t know what the shot is with Donald Trump at this late date to represent your interests in a negotiation?

The opening scene also gives me an excuse to observe again that Frank Bruni was put on Earth to write reviews of terrible restaurants favored by Manhattan swells:

But the crime that comes to mind first when I think of the Ciprianis is highway robbery. Based on my recent experience, that’s what happens almost any time Harry Cipriani on Fifth Avenue serves lunch or dinner.

In this gleaming room in the Sherry-Netherland hotel, the Ciprianis charge $22.95 for asparagus vinaigrette — 12 medium-size spears, neither white, truffle-flecked nor even Parmesan-bedecked — and $34.95 for an appetizer of fried calamari. That’s at dinnertime, I should clarify. At lunch there’s a whopping $1 discount per dish.

A dinner entree of fritto misto costs $48.95, even though it amounted to an extra-large portion of fried calamari with a few decorative shrimp and token scallops strewn, to negligible effect, among the generic calamari rings.

I assure you of the accuracy of those numbers, and of these: $66.95 for a sirloin, $36.95 for lasagna, $18.95 for minestrone. It’s tempting to devote the rest of this review to a price list. Nothing else I can present is nearly as compelling.

Besides, prices are the point of Harry Cipriani, which exists to affirm its patrons’ ability to throw away money.

It’s the epitome of a restaurant whose steep tariffs justify themselves, subbing for membership dues and assuring that the spouse, in-law, client or canine psychic being treated to a $16.95 piece of chocolate cake will be impressed.

Regulars accept and revel in this, or have bit by bit deluded themselves into believing that the $36.95 spaghetti with tomato and basil has something special to recommend it. (Trust me: it doesn’t.)

That’s 2007 — the Olive Garden-caliber spaghetti with tomato sauce is a cool $59 (or, as it would be priced there as if it was a grey market appliance store and not a would-be luxury restaurant, $58.95) in 2025 currency. Anyway, if you can afford that you can’t afford not to do better than any of the Vichy Biglaw firms.