By Mike Scarcella
(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday lashed out at a lawyer for the Trump Organization who is also representing Harvard University in its lawsuit against his administration, saying the company should fire him.
Trump’s post on his social media platform Truth Social did not name the attorney, but it appeared to describe prominent Washington lawyer William Burck of law firm Quinn Emanuel.
The Trump Organization is run by Trump’s sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. Asked whether Burck still worked for the Trump Organization, Eric Trump said in a statement on Thursday: “I view it as conflict and I will be moving in a different direction.” He did not elaborate.
Burck is a lead attorney for Harvard in a lawsuit filed this week accusing the Trump administration of illegally moving to freeze more than $2 billion in federal funding as part of a pressure campaign against the research institution and other schools.
In January, the Trump Organization said it retained Burck, a longtime Republican insider, as an outside ethics adviser to help develop and maintain internal policies to ward against conflicts of interest.
Burck and Quinn Emanuel did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In Trump’s Truth Social post, the president accused Harvard of being a hotbed of antisemitism and hate.
Harvard said in announcing its lawsuit against the Trump administration this week that it will “continue to fight hate with the urgency it demands as we fully comply with our obligations under the law.”
A representative for Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Burck, a former White House lawyer for former Republican President George W. Bush, has also represented Steve Bannon and other Trump backers. Quinn Emanuel, with more than 1,000 lawyers, is a longtime law firm for Tesla CEO and Trump ally Elon Musk.
Harvard’s lawsuit is not the firm’s only case opposing the administration. Quinn Emanuel is separately representing wrongly deported man Kilmar Abrego Garcia in his lawsuit seeking his return from El Salvador to the United States.
A hearing is scheduled for Monday in Boston in Harvard’s lawsuit against the Trump administration.
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella and Jeff Mason in Washington; Editing by David Bario and Matthew Lewis)
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