Feb 7 (Reuters) – Brad Karp, the chairman of high-powered U.S. legislation agency Paul Weiss, joined different outstanding 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 tons of of company legal professionals in a fundraising push for Harris quickly after she replaced incumbent Joe Biden because the Democratic presidential candidate in July 2024, and one in all his Paul Weiss companions helped put together the previous U.S. vice chairman for her debate with Trump.
However Trump won the election. And his return to the presidency final yr set in movement a collection of occasions that first shook Paul Weiss and later, with the U.S. Justice Division’s release of records involving the late financier and convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein, led Karp to resign this week as its chairman.
Although 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 Road and Washington energy dealer.
“In the event you had been going to jot down a Greek tragedy a couple of legislation agency chief, that is it,” a former senior Paul Weiss lawyer informed Reuters, talking on situation of anonymity.
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Remodeling Paul Weiss
After changing into chairman of Paul Weiss in 2008, Karp remodeled it from a revered New York litigation agency to a big-money international powerhouse. And Paul Weiss legal professionals and employees outpaced other major law firms in donations to Democrats throughout the 2024 election cycle.
Paul Weiss devoted professional bono work to progressive causes and recruited star Wall Road dealmakers alongside litigators who had served in Democratic former President Barack Obama’s administration.
Trump’s return to the White Home 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 legal professionals aligned with the Democratic Party.
A minimum of a dozen companions, together with the one who had suggested Harris for her presidential debate, departed the firm afterward.
A bipartisan push in Congress final yr, regardless of Trump’s objections, required the Justice Division 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 “current reporting has created a distraction and has positioned a concentrate on me that isn’t in the very best pursuits of the agency.” The agency beforehand had stated he regretted his Epstein interactions and “by no means witnessed or participated in misconduct.”
Karp, whose rolodex of representations has included massive Wall Road banks and the Nationwide Soccer League, stays at Paul Weiss serving purchasers, 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.
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From litigation to dealmaking
Based in 1875 by Samuel William Weiss and Julius Frank, the agency constructed a popularity as a defender of civil liberties. Within the Forties, it turned the primary main New York agency to call a feminine companion. It assisted civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall within the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Schooling that declared racial segregation in public colleges unconstitutional.
Karp joined Paul Weiss as a summer time affiliate in 1983 and spent his total profession on the agency, rising to guide the litigation division earlier than being elected chairman. Below his management, Paul Weiss turned a main defender of the monetary business, representing purchasers reminiscent of 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 purchasers and main litigation and transactional practices, in line with Kent Zimmermann, an adviser to legislation companies who interviewed Karp for an upcoming e-book.
In recruiting Barshay, Karp elevated the agency’s dealmaking firepower.
Karp ceaselessly used Paul Weiss assets to problem the primary Trump administration and companion 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 in opposition to the firearms business.
In 2018, Karp mobilized legal professionals to fight Trump’s household separation coverage on the U.S. border.
Karp additionally represented Leon Black, the co-founder of Apollo International Administration, a big Wall Road funding agency. Epstein turned concerned in price disputes with Black. Karp’s communications with Epstein regarding Black and different issues would finally contribute to the legislation agency chief’s resignation.
Davidoff Studios Images through Getty Photographs
Trump punishment
Paul Weiss employed legal professionals who investigated Trump and sued members within the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by the president’s supporters of their failed effort to forestall congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory. On the day of the riot, Karp stated he watched in horror “because the disgraceful outcomes of this tried 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 collection of such directives geared toward numerous legislation companies that the president seen as adversaries.
“The shifts he was in a position to obtain within the agency had been the exact issues that created the vulnerabilities Trump was in a position to exploit,” stated Scott Cummings, a authorized ethics professor at UCLA College of Legislation.
Fearing the order would immediate a consumer exodus and destroy the 150-year-old agency, Karp sought a settlement with Trump.
He arrived at a White Home assembly within the Oval Workplace that started with a protracted dialogue of golf. Sullivan & Cromwell co-chair Robert Giuffra, a Republican and Trump lawyer, was patched into the assembly by cellphone and later helped Karp negotiate a deal to rescind the chief order in alternate for $40 million of free authorized work for causes the president supported.
Eight different companies subsequently reached comparable offers with the administration to keep away from Trump government orders, pledging work value practically $1 billion mixed. 4 different legislation companies that Trump focused with government orders sued and won court rulings placing down the directives as unconstitutional.
A generational chief
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 College of Southern California Gould College of Legislation who himself as soon as led a legislation agency.
“What finally makes this episode a cautionary story is how even extremely profitable management can falter when institutional independence is compromised by proximity to government energy,” Burke stated. “In a interval marked by aggressive government motion and regulatory leverage, Paul Weiss’ resolution to settle early and visibly interact with the administration created a notion of lodging somewhat than resistance – one which stood in rigidity with the agency’s historic identification.”
Karp met Epstein by his illustration of Black, the agency stated. Data launched by the Justice Division documented Karp thanking Epstein for a “as soon as in a lifetime” dinner in 2015 with Woody Allen and later searching for Epstein’s help in securing a job for his son engaged on one of many director’s movie productions.
Different emails confirmed Karp and Epstein discussing a lady demanding cash from Black. Emails additionally confirmed them discussing Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement reached in 2008, when the financier pleaded responsible to prostitution costs in Florida, together with soliciting an underage woman.
The emails indicated the 2 remained in touch as lately as early 2019, months earlier than Epstein’s arrest on intercourse trafficking costs and subsequent suicide in a Manhattan jail whereas awaiting trial.
(Reporting by Mike Spector in New York and David Thomas in Chicago; Further reporting by Mike Scarcella; Modifying by David Bario and Will Dunham)
