Top Democratic lawmakers demanded new documents on Tuesday from a law firm that cut a deal with President Trump to head off a potentially crippling executive order, signaling that if they return to power after the midterm elections, they plan to investigate the nature of the agreements.
Under the deal it reached with the White House, the firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, agreed to do $100 million in pro bono work on causes that Mr. Trump supports to avoid the threat of the executive order. It was later revealed that Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer had also connected the firm with the Commerce Department to do legal work for the administration.
Eight other firms reached similar deals with the White House while four successfully fought them in court.
“We need to confront what a serious crisis this was, and is, in the legal profession of America,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and one of the lawmakers to sign onto the demand, said in a brief telephone interview. “We’ve never seen anything like it before.”
In a letter to the firm, Mr. Raskin; Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the ranking member of Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations; and Senator Adam B. Schiff of California asked Skadden to provide a variety of information about the deal and its government work. The request also pressed Skadden to explain how it did not have a conflict of interest when it advised the chipmaker Intel as the Trump administration acquired a 10 percent equity stake in the company.
It is unclear if Skadden will reply. The law firm did not respond to a request for comment. Similar requests to Skadden and other firms by Democrats have yielded little new information. As members of the minority, the Democratic lawmakers cannot compel anyone to answer their questions, which would change if they win back control of one or both chambers of Congress.
But Mr. Raskin and Mr. Blumenthal said that if they had subpoena power, they would seek to force the firms to explain why they entered into the deals, what the deals entailed, what work they did for the administration, whether they refused to take cases because they feared retaliation from the White House and any potential conflicts of interest the deals created with other clients.
Mr. Blumenthal said he wanted Brad Karp, the former chairman of the firm Paul Weiss, to testify under oath about the deal he reached with the administration. Paul Weiss had been a champion of liberal causes, but Mr. Karp became the first law firm leader to cut a deal with Mr. Trump in March 2025. The eight other firms that followed suit committed a billion dollars’ worth of free legal work to causes Mr. Trump has advanced.
“A lot of really good lawyers have left Paul Weiss because they couldn’t stomach this corrupt bargain, and they probably know more than we know,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “We would probably have some whistle-blowers and other sources of information.”
He added, “We’re looking here not just to expose unlawfulness and wrongdoing but write into the law some safeguards that will prevent it from happening in the future.”
The Democrats’ continued interest in the deals demonstrates how many unanswered questions remain. And it shows the degree to which top Democrats, who say the firms’ capitulation is troubling for the rule of law, would prioritize scrutinizing them.
The New York Times reported last week that as part of a lawsuit the American Bar Association brought against the administration to stop it from attacking law firms, the Justice Department, in an unusual move, subpoenaed the leaders of every firm that faced the threat of the executive orders in court to testify. The Justice Department also demanded that firms that reached deals with the White House hand over various documents about the agreements and their communications with Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Boris Epshteyn.
