Ranking Members Raskin, Blumenthal, and Scott Expand Investigation into Trump Administration’s Law Firm Shakedown and Demand Answers from EEOC

Washington, D.C. (July 9, 2025)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Ranking Member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, are pressing the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for answers about its role in abetting the Trump Administration’s coercing major law firms into providing nearly $1 billion in pro-bono legal services to causes approved by President Trump.

“Public reporting suggests—and information we have received as part of our ongoing investigation corroborates—that you used your position as Acting Chair of the EEOC to facilitate a shakedown of prominent law firms that represented causes or employed individuals that the President dislikes. We request your prompt response to our requests for documents and information about your role in launching sham EEOC investigations, which the White House used to threaten and extort law firms into providing free legal services to the President’s allies. If you believe these allegations are incorrect, we welcome the opportunity to hear from you directly and promptly at a transcribed interview,” wrote the Ranking Members. 

On March 6, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie LLP because the firm held “positions with which [President Trump] disagrees.” In the order, President Trump commanded the EEOC to conduct an investigation into law firms. As a federal court has found, this investigation was mere pretext for the Administration to use “the powers of the federal government to target lawyers for their representation of clients and avowed progressive employment policies in an overt attempt to suppress and punish certain viewpoints.”

Less than two weeks later, the EEOC announced they had requested information from 20 top law firms as part of an investigation of their diversity, equity, and inclusion-related employment practices. By sending these “letters of inquiry” to law firms and publicizing them, the EEOC appears to have violated both EEOC rules and federal law. Under Title VII, EEOC allegations of misconduct against an employer must be kept confidential, but the EEOC has publicized their letters to law firms with great fanfare. 

After EEOC’s public announcement, nine law firms entered into agreements with the Trump Administration to resolve the sham investigation, collectively providing nearly $1 billion dollarsin pro-bono legal services to Trump-endorsed causes. On April 11, when Trump announced his agreement with four of the nine law firms, the EEOC published on its website that it would be withdrawing its letters to the law firms. 

In a letter to the EEOC’s Acting Chair Andrea Lucas, the Ranking Members called on the EEOC to respond to requests for documents and information regarding their role in Trump’s law firm shakedown. The Ranking Members also welcomed the Acting Director to sit for a transcribed interview to clarify the record herself. 

“Under your leadership, it appears the EEOC became a key part of how President Trump ‘wield[ed] the investigative and prosecutorial powers of the State to punish and suppress certain law firms’ advocacy,’ in violation of EEOC rules, federal law, and the Constitution. If true, this is a perversion of the EEOC’s mission and makes a mockery of due process guaranteed under the Constitution, to which you swore an oath.  The American people deserve to know the truth,” concluded the Ranking Members.

Ranking Members Raskin and Blumenthal are leading a bicameral probe into President Trump’s deals with law firms seeking to avoid his unlawful executive orders, which have been repeatedly invalidated by federal judges.

Click here to read the letter.