Final April, dozens of attorneys and their friends gathered on the Columbus Inn in Wilmington, Del. The revered restaurant, with roots tracing again greater than two centuries, was as soon as a hangout for Buffalo Invoice. But on this cloudless night time, the gang would have been joyful to be partying nearly wherever.
Hours earlier, the attorneys and their shopper, Dominion Voting Programs, had negotiated a unprecedented $787 million settlement with Fox Information. The deal was struck moments earlier than opening arguments in a hotly anticipated defamation trial, by which Fox was accused of airing inflammatory lies that Dominion had thwarted Donald J. Trump within the 2020 presidential election.
Now the corporate’s two principal legislation companies may benefit from the spoils.
Susman Godfrey would pocket a thick slice of the settlement that Fox had simply wired over.
Clare Locke, a smaller agency that makes a speciality of the area of interest subject of defamation legislation, wouldn’t get a lower of the settlement. However Dominion had already paid it hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in charges, and the victory supplied the agency the potential for one thing even better.
Run by the husband-and-wife staff of Tom Clare and Libby Locke, the agency had helped popularize efforts by rich and highly effective shoppers to assault information organizations and delegitimize or kill unfavorable articles. Ms. Locke specifically had taken to publicly arguing that a lot of the information media was unethical, although she additionally voiced assist totally free speech.
The triumph in opposition to Fox gave the agency’s founders a chance to widen their attraction. They might argue that Clare Locke was not an enemy of the free press or the First Modification, however a champion of reality and a guardian of democracy.
On the Columbus Inn, the exhausted however jubilant attorneys drank and toasted each other late into the night.
“Celebrating tonight,” Ms. Locke wrote in an e-mail at 10:55 p.m. She added, “It’s a bit loopy right here on our finish.”
It was even crazier than she realized. The case had made authorized historical past — but it surely had additionally torn the agency aside.
Friction amongst attorneys at Clare Locke had been constructing for years, and far of it centered on Ms. Locke. Her colleagues chafed at her administration fashion. Some feared that her public embrace of conservative causes, together with on Fox Information, was alienating shoppers.
Then got here Dominion.
Mr. Clare had been dedicated to the case since late 2020. Ms. Locke had at occasions publicly boasted in regards to the Dominion lawsuit, too — however she additionally repeatedly tried to tug her agency off the case, together with shortly earlier than the trial was set to start, based on a number of folks with data of the agency’s internal workings. Most of the greater than two dozen folks interviewed for this text requested anonymity to keep away from skilled repercussions.
Whereas Ms. Locke’s efforts failed, they’d shattered morale and confidence contained in the small however formidable agency.
As she made her rounds at nighttime, crowded room on the Columbus Inn, Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke didn’t know that the majority of their agency’s companions had already determined to resign.
In a collection of letters totaling practically 60 pages, Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke mentioned The New York Instances was spreading falsehoods about them and their agency. They mentioned the agency had not tried to get off the Dominion case: “On the contrary, Tom and Libby have been pushing for the agency to have an excellent bigger position.”
The pair accused The Instances of counting on sources “with a vested curiosity in maligning Tom and Libby’s popularity to develop their very own fledgling enterprise.” They usually mentioned that Clare Locke had confronted The Instances in court docket and that the article was “clearly looking for to strengthen the paper’s place in pending and future litigation.”
Preserve calm and sue
Earlier than beginning their boutique defamation store, Mr. Clare, 53, and Ms. Locke, 44, labored on the large worldwide legislation agency of Kirkland & Ellis, the place each have been companions.
Mr. Clare, a workhorse who typically billed practically 3,000 hours a yr, had been an understudy to a senior associate whose follow included high-profile defamation circumstances. Ms. Locke arrived at Kirkland in 2006 after graduating from Georgetown College’s legislation college, the place she’d led the native chapter of the conservative Federalist Society. Mr. Clare quickly turned a mentor.
In 2014, they based Clare Locke. The general public rationalization, which they recounted in interviews through the years, was that they’d grown annoyed at Kirkland, which typically blocked them from taking defamation circumstances that conflicted with the agency’s bread-and-butter work for company shoppers.
There was extra to their origin story, although. Senior companions at Kirkland had fielded complaints that Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke, who on the time have been married to different folks, have been having an affair, based on six present and former Kirkland workers. Ms. Locke typically reported to Mr. Clare.
Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke denied on the time that they have been romantically concerned. However Kirkland companions instructed them that if the connection continued, no less than certainly one of them must go away the agency, 4 of the present and former workers mentioned.
Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke mentioned that “this isn’t true and any suggestion on the contrary can be false and defamatory.” (A Kirkland spokeswoman declined to remark.)
Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke arrange their agency within the rich Washington suburb of Alexandria, Va., close to the place they each lived with their respective spouses and youngsters. They recruited a small group of attorneys and workers members from Kirkland to hitch them.
One morning in 2015, the brand new agency’s attorneys have been stunned to obtain a mass e-mail from Ms. Locke’s husband, Spencer R. Fisher. He wrote that he had found that Ms. Locke’s relationship with Mr. Clare was greater than skilled. Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke had beforehand assured workers that they weren’t romantically concerned, based on Megan L. Meier and Andy Phillips, two of Clare Locke’s first recruits. Mr. Fisher’s e-mail planted seeds of mistrust, with some workers starting to fret about their skill to speak brazenly with their bosses.
Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke denied telling Ms. Meier and Mr. Phillips that they weren’t romantically concerned, they usually mentioned the workers didn’t point out issues a couple of lack of belief.
Mr. Fisher, in an e-mail to The Instances, didn’t reply questions in regards to the message he had despatched to Clare Locke workers and others. “Libby just isn’t solely a superb lawyer, but additionally a compassionate and giving individual,” he mentioned. “She has a robust sense of ethics and accountability, and he or she is at all times prepared to assist these in want.”
Clare Locke’s fortunes quickly soared. In 2016, the agency received a roughly $3 million jury verdict on behalf of a dean on the College of Virginia who had been defamed by a deeply flawed article in Rolling Stone journal. The victory generated nationwide headlines.
A procession of profitable shoppers got here calling for assist combating the media. There have been hedge fund kingpins and Silicon Valley executives accused of non-public or enterprise misconduct. There have been politicians going through allegations of sexual improprieties. There have been litigious overseas businessmen. There was a wing of the Sackler household, of OxyContin notoriety. There have been Russian oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska, though Clare Locke has since stopped representing him.
“Preserve calm and file libel fits,” learn a framed signal hanging in Clare Locke’s workplace.
The agency represented the previous Alaska governor Sarah Palin and Mission Veritas, the group of right-wing provocateurs, in lawsuits in opposition to The Instances. The Mission Veritas case is ongoing.
Litigation, nevertheless, tended to be a final resort. Extra continuously, Mr. Clare, Ms. Locke and their colleagues sought to derail or form tales earlier than publication. To do that, they cranked out warning letters to reporters, editors, publishers and their attorneys attempting to poke holes in deliberate articles and accusing journalists of bias, unethical conduct and getting details flawed. Citing the potential for litigation, the letters typically instructed information organizations to protect all paperwork, notes and different supplies related to their reporting.
Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke used comparable ways as The Instances ready this text. In a single e-mail to a Instances lawyer, Ms. Locke referred to as this reporter “a misogynist and a snake.” She and Mr. Clare instructed The Instances to protect all paperwork associated to this text.
The pair mentioned they solely pursued media retailers that bought details flawed, they usually denied attempting to kill unfavorable articles. “The agency takes shoppers who’ve legitimate complaints about how they have been mistreated by the media,” they mentioned.
“They’re fierce advocates for his or her shoppers and never for themselves,” mentioned Leland Vittert, a former Fox Information correspondent who’s now an anchor on the cable community NewsNation. He mentioned he turned buddies with Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke after they helped his household’s enterprise in Michigan confront adverse native media protection in 2016. “I’ve at all times seen them as individuals who simply care in regards to the reality.”
Piloting the Cessna
Clare Locke typically charged by the hour; Mr. Clare’s charge typically was about $1,800, based on folks with data of the agency’s funds. (Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke wouldn’t talk about the agency’s funds however mentioned that they cost the identical hourly charge.) The agency typically required shoppers to pay tens of hundreds of {dollars} in upfront retainers — and extra if the shopper wished to explicitly threaten to sue. Even pretty anodyne letters to media organizations may price shoppers practically six figures.
Earlier than lengthy, Clare Locke was pulling in tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} a yr in income. Whereas the agency had a number of companions, Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke have been the one two with possession stakes, and the folks acquainted with the agency’s funds estimated that the founders every took house hundreds of thousands of {dollars} a yr.
In 2017, after divorcing their spouses and about three years after beginning their agency, they married. Ms. Meier, the primary recruit to their agency, officiated their Georgetown marriage ceremony.
The couple purchased a $4.3 million home down the road from their agency’s places of work. They bought a lakefront house in Ms. Locke’s native Georgia and spent lengthy stretches at a property within the Turks and Caicos, based on public data and acquaintances. Mr. Clare piloted the agency’s Cessna jet between these and different areas.
Colleagues described each Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke as good and hard-working; of their written response to The Instances, the couple famous that she twice returned early from maternity leaves “due to her dedication to her work and shoppers.”
In different methods, although, they differed. He was risk-averse and calm, colleagues mentioned. She was entrepreneurial and could possibly be impetuous. At a convention final fall, Mr. Clare and different media attorneys have been onstage discussing the Dominion case when Ms. Locke interrupted from the viewers to specific her view that the media has too many authorized protections, based on panelists, a few of whom mentioned they have been bowled over by her outburst. “We wish to joke that ours is a narrative of fireside and ice,” Mr. Clare mentioned on a podcast final yr.
Thanks partly to the high-profile Rolling Stone victory, Ms. Locke turned a well-liked reserving for TV exhibits and at public occasions to debate media legislation and the scope of the First Modification.
At a Federalist Society convention, she argued in favor of unmasking journalists’ confidential sources, which might characterize a break from longstanding authorized precedents and the legal guidelines of many states. At that convention and elsewhere, she referred to as for the overturning of a collection of Supreme Court docket selections that made it tougher for public figures to win libel lawsuits — a stance that has gained assist from no less than two justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, and would typically profit her agency’s shoppers.
Behind the scenes, Ms. Locke helped Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida set up an occasion final yr to argue for diluting authorized protections for the media, based on emails and different paperwork that The Instances obtained through public data requests.
Ms. Locke additionally appeared 3 times on Tucker Carlson’s top-rated Fox Information present. He praised her as “some of the profitable attorneys on this small however vital subject” of defamation legislation.
In inside Slack messages that the agency supplied to The Instances, Ms. Locke’s colleagues applauded their boss’s performances on Fox Information. Privately, although, some frightened about what shoppers would consider the agency’s associating with a present that typically trafficked in xenophobia and falsehoods.
About three weeks after the 2020 election, Mr. Clare was getting ready for Thanksgiving when he bought a cellphone name from a consultant of Dominion.
Conspiracy theorists have been flooding the airwaves and social media with false accusations that Dominion’s voting know-how, in use in 28 states, was partly guilty for Mr. Trump’s defeat. Trump allies like Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell have been claiming that the corporate had modified or canceled folks’s votes and that it was managed by the Venezuelan authorities, amongst different baseless costs. Retailers like Fox Information and One America Information amplified the falsehoods.
Dominion’s enterprise was below siege. Its workers confronted threats.
Mr. Clare agreed to take the corporate on as a shopper. “We acknowledged straight away simply how momentous a difficulty this was, not just for Dominion, however for your complete nation and the integrity of elections,” he later instructed Reuters.
Mr. Clare and his colleagues started sending scores of cease-and-desist letters warning Trump allies, media personalities and information organizations that they have been disseminating defamatory lies. The purpose was twofold: to cease the smears of Dominion and, failing that, to create a paper path displaying that the potential defendants had been placed on discover.
The lies continued.
In January 2021, shortly after a Trump-inspired mob attacked the Capitol, Dominion introduced on Susman Godfrey, a litigation powerhouse with greater than 150 attorneys. It had change into clear that Dominion would file a slew of lawsuits and that Clare Locke was too small to deal with all of them by itself. As well as, Clare Locke was charging Dominion by the hour, and the payments have been already piling up. Susman Godfrey agreed to take the case on contingency, that means it will get a lower of any settlement or damages however wouldn’t cost the corporate within the meantime. (Susman Godfrey represents The Instances in a copyright lawsuit in opposition to OpenAI and Microsoft.)
The grievance in opposition to Fox was filed in March 2021, in state court docket in Delaware, the place Dominion and Fox have been each included. Together with displays, it ran to 441 pages. It accused Fox of knowingly offering a platform for friends to lie about Dominion, and it accused quite a few hosts, together with Mr. Carlson, Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs, of endorsing and repeating these lies. The swimsuit sought greater than $1.6 billion in damages.
Susman Godfrey took the lead on the lawsuit, however Clare Locke had some essential assignments. It was largely answerable for warding off Fox’s motions to dismiss the case. Mr. Clare and his colleague Ms. Meier additionally dealt with depositions of some vital Fox figures. One was Mr. Carlson, who emerged from his August 2022 deposition rattled by Mr. Clare. “It was so unhealthy,” he fumed in a leaked video, “the hate that I felt for that man.”
The most important bombshells emerged from the invention course of, by which Dominion’s attorneys bought to sift via Fox workers’ emails, textual content messages and different data.
They discovered that Fox Information had an inside analysis operation, often known as the “Brainroom,” that had concluded that the allegations about Dominion switching votes have been “100% false.” Hosts, producers and executives had repeatedly written to 1 one other that they knew the community was broadcasting false claims. “Sidney Powell is mendacity,” Mr. Carlson had written to his producer in November 2020, at the same time as Fox stored placing her on air.
This sort of documentation was like manna for the Dominion staff. Attorneys zapped messages forwards and backwards marveling at what they have been studying. “I’m unsure I’ll ever see that kind of proof once more,” Mr. Clare mentioned on a panel final yr.
Speak of quitting
Regardless of the obvious power of Dominion’s case, Ms. Locke was sad.
On a number of events in late 2022 and early 2023, Mr. Clare instructed colleagues that he had mentioned the case along with his spouse and that she wished the agency to cease engaged on it, based on a number of folks with data of the dialog, together with Daniel P. Watkins, one of many Clare Locke companions on the Dominion swimsuit. Mr. Clare instructed colleagues that he was inclined to grant Ms. Locke’s want.
“She didn’t need us to work on the case and was very expressive about it,” mentioned Mr. Watkins, who later left to start out a brand new agency.
Mr. Clare denied making the remarks about quitting. “The agency didn’t wish to get off the case, and it didn’t,” he and Ms. Locke mentioned of their written response. The 2 mentioned they pushed for a bigger position on the case however declined to supply particulars.
Ms. Locke instructed folks that Clare Locke wasn’t being adequately paid for its intensive work. One situation was that the price association the agency had negotiated with Dominion imposed a cap on the full quantity that could possibly be billed, a restrict that was quick approaching. At one level, Ms. Locke mentioned the agency would wish to cease working as quickly as that cap was hit, even when it occurred in the course of the trial, based on folks acquainted with the interior deliberations.
Some attorneys concerned within the Dominion litigation doubted that was the complete rationalization. They believed that Ms. Locke wished to ditch Dominion partly as a result of her legislation agency and husband have been in secondary roles and he or she had barely any direct involvement within the high-profile case. Mr. Watkins famous that Ms. Locke at occasions would change the topic when he and his colleagues started excitedly discussing what they considered the case of the century.
“She was upset when issues didn’t revolve round her,” Mr. Watkins mentioned.
Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke dismissed that as “demonstrably false and completely ridiculous, to not point out fully sexist.” Whereas Ms. Locke was not listed in court docket filings as a lawyer on the Dominion case, they mentioned she made “many contributions,” together with serving to put together for and sitting in on the deposition of Mr. Carlson.
Mr. Clare’s colleagues instructed him repeatedly that quitting the case can be a public embarrassment as a result of folks would assume that Dominion had fired the agency, based on attorneys with data of the discussions.
Finally, Mr. Clare agreed to remain on the case.
The trial was scheduled for mid-April. Attorneys descended on Wilmington weeks prematurely. The Dominion staff booked total flooring of the DoubleTree resort subsequent to the court docket complicated.
Mr. Clare was one of many few Dominion attorneys not staying in Wilmington; to the irritation of some Clare Locke and Susman Godfrey attorneys, he spent a lot of the first two weeks of April within the Turks and Caicos. He arrived in Wilmington the day earlier than the trial was initially scheduled to start.
Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke mentioned he was totally engaged in trial preparation whereas working remotely. He wasn’t scheduled to cross-examine witnesses till later within the trial.
The choose urged the 2 sides to take a ultimate stab at settling. Negotiations went all the way down to the wire. Lastly, simply as opening arguments have been about to start out, there was a deal: Fox would pay Dominion $787.5 million.
The choose introduced the settlement to a shocked courtroom. Earlier than the attorneys headed to the Columbus Inn, Fox wired the cash to Dominion’s accounts. (In a press release for this text, Dominion mentioned that it was grateful to all of its attorneys “for his or her world-class assist.”)
It was one of many largest defamation settlements in U.S. historical past, but it surely appeared to undercut an argument Ms. Locke had been making about constitutional protections of the media.
For years, she had been calling for the Supreme Court docket to overturn its well-known 1964 ruling in New York Instances v. Sullivan, which required public officers to beat excessive hurdles to win defamation circumstances. Ms. Locke and her allies argue that Sullivan, in addition to a handful of subsequent selections, makes all of it however unattainable to carry the media accountable after they wrecked reputations.
However the Sullivan precedent didn’t get in the best way of Fox’s being held to account to the tune of practically $800 million.
Ms. Locke, nevertheless, didn’t again down. To her, the Dominion lawsuit revealed a essentially dishonest media that had been emboldened by undeserved constitutional protections. “I believe the settlement exhibits simply how comfy the mainstream press has change into below the Sullivan regime mendacity to the American public,” she mentioned the week after the deal.
Anger and an exodus
Regardless that Clare Locke had caught with Dominion, questions on its dedication to the case had sapped some companions’ confidence within the agency’s management — the newest in a protracted checklist of grievances.
Some companions felt that as a result of they didn’t have fairness stakes within the agency, they have been being underpaid. They have been sad when the agency employed a lawyer from Mission Veritas, a company whose tradecraft included misleading ways, with out consulting the companions. They resented what they noticed as Ms. Locke’s harsh remedy of some subordinates. They usually frightened that potential shoppers can be turned off by the notion of Ms. Locke as an ideological warrior.
By the point of the Dominion settlement, 4 Clare Locke companions — Ms. Meier, Mr. Watkins, Mr. Phillips and Dustin Pusch — had determined to stop to start out their very own legislation agency.
Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke mentioned that the 4 “by no means expressed ‘frustrations’ or ‘resentment’ to Tom or Libby” and had mentioned in self-evaluation memos that they’d confidence within the agency and its administration. They mentioned that the companions had every earned hundreds of thousands of {dollars} and that a few of them had praised the agency’s compensation insurance policies.
One morning in early August, the 4 companions gathered in a convention room in Clare Locke’s places of work, based on Mr. Watkins and different folks acquainted with the assembly. The agency’s two founders joined through Zoom.
Ms. Meier and her colleagues broke the information: They have been going to situation a information launch asserting the creation of their new agency, which might be referred to as Meier Watkins Phillips Pusch. Except for Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke, there can be just one remaining associate at their agency.
The 2 founders appeared shocked. Mr. Clare, whose digicam was off for a lot of the assembly, mentioned he wasn’t certain that the agency would have the ability to proceed to function. (Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke mentioned that “there was NEVER a second when anybody thought or mentioned that the agency wouldn’t survive.”)
Ms. Locke requested when the departures have been efficient. “Twenty minutes in the past,” Mr. Watkins responded.
There was silence. Ms. Locke started to cry.
Headline-worthy shoppers
Any issues about Clare Locke’s skill to maintain working shortly proved unfounded. The agency replenished its ranks by selling associates to companions and hiring new attorneys, together with one other veteran of Mission Veritas.
“Clare Locke is a greater and stronger legislation agency at this time than earlier than the departures,” Mr. Clare and Ms. Locke mentioned. They mentioned the previous companions’ “true motivation” for creating their very own agency was to grab for themselves a multimillion-dollar price from an ongoing defamation lawsuit, which Mr. Watkins and others had filed on behalf of an organization referred to as Kytch whereas at Clare Locke.
Mr. Phillips disputed that. He mentioned that Kytch fired Clare Locke final fall, after the 4 companions had created their new agency, which is now representing the corporate. (Clare Locke this month filed a lawsuit looking for authorized charges from Kytch.)
On the similar time, Clare Locke stored attracting headline-worthy shoppers.
Final fall, Harvard’s president, Claudine Homosexual, got here below fireplace from activists and alumni just like the hedge fund supervisor Invoice Ackman, who accused her of plagiarism. The college employed Clare Locke to defend Ms. Homosexual and to warn The New York Put up in regards to the prospect of litigation if it printed articles in regards to the allegations. The Put up ran its tales, and Ms. Homosexual quickly resigned as president.
Then Clare Locke started representing Mr. Ackman. In January, Enterprise Insider printed articles accusing his spouse, Neri Oxman, of plagiarism. Mr. Ackman employed Clare Locke to jot down a 77-page letter threatening the outlet with litigation if it didn’t retract the claims. Enterprise Insider has stood by its articles.
In a current interview with The Instances, Mr. Ackman mentioned he was upset with the media’s energy “to destroy lives.” Saying the letter on X, he referred to as Ms. Locke and Mr. Clare “the rock stars of defamation legislation. They need to be your first name if one thing like what occurred to Neri and me occurs to you.”
Their agency, Mr. Ackman famous, was “finest identified for its current illustration of Dominion.”
Kitty Bennett contributed analysis.
