At least 11 companies are moving their business away from firms that have settled with Donald Trump’s White House, The Wall Street Journal first reported. Some are planning — or are already giving — more work to those that have been targeted by Trump or his administration but did not budge, according to the companies’ general counsels and other people familiar.
These companies include financial services provider Morgan Stanley, technology corporation Oracle, and others in the airline and pharmaceutical industries, according to The Wall Street Journal. Technology conglomerate Microsoft had also expressed skepticism for working with a firm that came to a deal, and fast food giant McDonald’s stopped being represented by another firm a few months before a trial.
The Wall Street Journal reported that general counsels have doubted whether they could trust a firm to negotiate deals and win their own cases in court if they did not resist demands from Trump.
It might be as simple as a conflict-of-interest check. If a firm has a contract with the government, it can usually not take cases that would pit it against it. That is actually quite normal, these firms obviously didn’t think that part through.