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A lawyer who made national headlines for her viral resignation letter calling out the white-shoe firm Skadden for capitulating to Donald Trump is now helping her clients stand up to the administration.
Earlier this year, attorney Brenna Frey left her associate position at Skadden after learning that the firm agreed to provide $100 million in pro bono services to Trump, and she’s now part of the legal team representing three former Justice Department employees, led by fired Jan. 6 prosecutor Michael Gordon.
“I think the experience of leaving Skadden and putting myself out there publicly, which was not a position I had ever been in before that, gives me some insight into what I am asking of my clients in some cases,” Frey said in an interview on Substack Live.
She added that her experiences help her inform her clients about what goes into putting their names on a formal complaint.
“That's putting your name out there and saying, ‘This is wrong. What happened to me is wrong, and I'm going to articulate in federal court why it is wrong. And I'm going to win,’” Frey continued.
An eight-year veteran of the Justice Department, Gordon helped convict some of the most notorious Jan. 6 defendants, including Richard “Bigo” Barnett and Eric Munchel.
Barnett was notoriously photographed gleefully kicking up a foot on a desk inside then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, and Munchel earned the nickname “zip-tie guy” after being photographed toting plastic handcuffs with him inside the Senate gallery.
A federal judge said at Munchel’s sentencing that he intended to use those zip-ties to take senators as hostages if they hadn’t cleared the floor.
For his efforts prosecuting Barnett, Munchel and others, Gordon earned routine commendations for his “outstanding” work — including two days before he was fired, according to his complaint.
Two other ex-Justice Department lawyers, Patty Hartman and Joseph Tirrell, joined the lawsuit. Hartman was a public information officer who sent out numerous press releases about Jan. 6-related cases, and Tirrell served as assistant director for labor and employment law.
All three received three-paragraph termination letters without any rationale for their firing, save for “Article II” executive branch authority, which were reproduced in their complaint.
Frey is part of an all-star legal team: Now a counsel at the firm founded by Abbe Lowell earlier this year, Frey’s co-counsel in the case include Norm Eisen, Mark Zaid, Bradley Moss and others.
In the full video, Frey shares her insights about the case and her reflections on whether BigLaw has been chastened by the public backlash against firms that refused to fight back against Trump’s executive orders.
“I hope they’re getting the message,” Frey said.
Read the lawsuit in full here.
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