By MIKE SCARCELLA and DAVID THOMAS Reuters
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U.S. law firm Susman Godfrey asked a judge in Washington on Thursday to permanently bar President Donald Trump’s executive order against it, calling the measure an act of retaliation that trampled its rights under the U.S. Constitution.

U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan sharply questioned a Justice Department lawyer representing Trump’s administration, repeatedly asking how it could justify restricting the firm’s access to government officials and contracting work without evidence of wrongdoing.

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“I’m not trying to browbeat you here, I’m just trying to figure out where the lines are” in the administration’s arguments, AliKhan said.

The hearing marked the latest court clash over the Republican president’s orders targeting major law firms for their connections to his political adversaries or cases they have taken.

Trump has been losing the legal battle so far, after judges put his orders against four firms on hold and struck down one of them entirely on May 2.

Susman Godfrey’s lawsuit said Trump’s order was in retaliation for its defense of the integrity of the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

The firm represents election technology supplier Dominion Voting Systems in cases that challenged false claims the election was stolen from Trump through widespread voting fraud.

“The whole point of the Susman Godfrey executive order and those like it is to intimidate law firms into abandoning advocacy on behalf of their clients,” the firm’s lawyer Donald Verrilli told AliKhan at the hearing.

“That is unconstitutional, full stop,” Verrilli said.

Houston-based Susman Godfrey sued the administration last month, asserting Trump’s executive order violated constitutional protections for free speech and due process.

Trump issued orders against Susman and three other firms — Perkins Coie, Jenner &Block and WilmerHale — that suspended their lawyers’ security clearances, restricted their access to government officials and sought to cancel federal contracts held by their clients.

AliKhan grilled a lawyer for the Justice Department, Richard Lawson, on several aspects of Trump’s order, including its assertion that Susman Godfrey worked to degrade U.S. elections and that it engaged in unlawful racial discrimination.

Lawson said the executive order was consistent with the scope of “executive discretion” and did not strip the firm of any inherent rights.

AliKhan said she would issue a ruling at a later date.