Feb 7 (Reuters) – Brad Karp, the chairman of high-powered U.S. regulation agency Paul Weiss, joined different distinguished Democratic fundraisers at election evening gatherings in Washington in November 2024 hoping for a Kamala Harris victory over Republican rival Donald Trump.
Karp had reached out to a whole lot of company legal professionals in a fundraising push for Harris quickly after she changed incumbent Joe Biden because the Democratic presidential candidate in July 2024, and one in every of his Paul Weiss companions helped put together the previous U.S. vice chairman for her debate with Trump.
However Trump received the election. And his return to the presidency final yr set in movement a sequence of occasions that first shook Paul Weiss and later, with the U.S. Justice Division’s launch of information 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.
“If you happen to had been going to put in writing a Greek tragedy a few regulation agency chief, that is it,” a former senior Paul Weiss legal professional informed Reuters, talking on situation of anonymity.
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Reworking Paul Weiss
After changing into chairman of Paul Weiss in 2008, Karp reworked it from a revered New York litigation agency to a big-money international powerhouse. And Paul Weiss legal professionals and employees outpaced different main regulation companies in donations to Democrats in the course of 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 choice 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 Get together.
At the least a dozen companions, together with the one who had suggested Harris for her presidential debate, departed the agency afterward.
A bipartisan push in Congress final yr, regardless of Trump’s objections, required the Justice Division to launch recordsdata associated to Epstein. A trove of emails made public on the finish of January revealed in depth 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 asserting his resignation.
In that assertion, Karp mentioned that “current reporting has created a distraction and has positioned a give attention to me that isn’t in the most effective pursuits of the agency.” The agency beforehand had mentioned he regretted his Epstein interactions and “by no means witnessed or participated in misconduct.”
Karp, whose rolodex of representations has included giant Wall Road banks and the Nationwide Soccer League, stays at Paul Weiss serving shoppers, the agency mentioned 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 follow 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 repute as a defender of civil liberties. Within the Nineteen 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 Courtroom’s landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Schooling that declared racial segregation in public colleges unconstitutional.
Karp joined Paul Weiss as a summer season affiliate in 1983 and spent his total profession on the agency, rising to steer the litigation division earlier than being elected chairman. Below his management, Paul Weiss turned a main defender of the monetary trade, representing shoppers comparable to 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 shoppers and main litigation and transactional practices, in response to Kent Zimmermann, an adviser to regulation companies who interviewed Karp for an upcoming e-book.
In recruiting Barshay, Karp elevated the agency’s dealmaking firepower.
Karp continuously used Paul Weiss sources 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 towards the firearms trade.
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 charge disputes with Black. Karp’s communications with Epstein regarding Black and different issues would finally contribute to the regulation agency chief’s resignation.
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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 stop congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory. On the day of the riot, Karp mentioned 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 sequence of such directives geared toward varied regulation companies that the president considered as adversaries.
“The shifts he was capable of obtain within the agency had been the exact issues that created the vulnerabilities Trump was capable of exploit,” mentioned Scott Cummings, a authorized ethics professor at UCLA College of Regulation.
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 change for $40 million of free authorized work for causes the president supported.
Eight different companies subsequently reached related offers with the administration to keep away from Trump government orders, pledging work price almost $1 billion mixed. 4 different regulation companies that Trump focused with government orders sued and received court docket rulings hanging 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 personal fairness authorized market, in response to Kevin Burke, a professor on the College of Southern California Gould College of Regulation who himself as soon as led a regulation 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 mentioned. “In a interval marked by aggressive government motion and regulatory leverage, Paul Weiss’ choice to settle early and visibly have interaction with the administration created a notion of lodging reasonably than resistance – one which stood in stress with the agency’s historic identification.”
Karp met Epstein via his illustration of Black, the agency mentioned. 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 in search of 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 girl demanding cash from Black. Emails additionally confirmed them discussing Epstein’s non-prosecution settlement reached in 2008, when the financier pleaded responsible to prostitution expenses in Florida, together with soliciting an underage lady.
The emails indicated the 2 remained in touch as not too long ago as early 2019, months earlier than Epstein’s arrest on intercourse trafficking expenses 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; Enhancing by David Bario and Will Dunham)