By Mike Scarcella
(Reuters) – The judge overseeing the U.S. criminal case against Chinese telecom Huawei said at a hearing that President Donald Trump’s executive order stripping security clearances from lawyers at Jenner & Block could be a hurdle for the company’s defense in the case.
U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly in Brooklyn questioned prosecutors about the status of Jenner lawyer David Bitkower at the Wednesday hearing, warning that a security clearance would be necessary for the defense team.
The judge asked what both sides were doing to address the problem.
“It’s an issue in terms of the right to counsel, it’s an issue in terms of trying the case,” Donnelly said. “We’ve got a trial scheduled for January, and if you’ve got to get people cleared, I think it’s an issue.”
A Justice Department lawyer said the government would work to facilitate a security clearance for a different member of Huawei’s defense team.
Later on Wednesday, a lawyer representing Jenner in its lawsuit in Washington, D.C., seeking to strike down the Trump executive order said the clearance of one of the firm’s attorneys had been suspended. The letter did not name the lawyer.
Jenner is among four law firms targeted by Trump’s executive orders, based on their ties to lawyers or cases that the president said did not align with his administration’s priorities. The other three firms are WilmerHale, Perkins Coie and Susman Godfrey.
A judge in Washington is poised to rule soon in Jenner’s lawsuit seeking to permanently block Trump’s order against it.
The Jenner filing and the exchange in the Huawei case showed the continued effects of Trump’s executive orders against prominent law firms, even as judges have so far sided with the firms in lawsuits challenging the orders.
Huawei and Jenner declined to comment. Bitkower did not respond to a request for comment. Other lawyers representing Huawei at law firms Sidley Austin and Steptoe did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for the Eastern District of New York’s federal prosecutor office in Brooklyn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jenner and Bitkower, a former senior federal prosecutor who is now a leader of the firm’s investigations and defense group, are defending Huawei against criminal racketeering and trade secrets claims filed by the Justice Department in a superseding indictment in 2020.
Huawei has denied the allegations and argued the government was treating the company “as a prosecutorial target in search of a crime.”
Trump’s executive orders against Jenner, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie and Susman Godfrey sought to suspend security clearances held by lawyers at the firms, restrict their access to government officials and cancel federal contracts held by their clients.
Jenner in a court filing on April 8 said that Trump’s order “suspends all of Jenner’s security clearances, including those required for the representation of clients in their most sensitive matters.”
WilmerHale said in a court filing this week that security clearances for two of its lawyers had been suspended after Trump hit the firm with an executive order. The firm did not name the attorneys.
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella; Editing by David Bario and Leslie Adler)
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