Trump team swaps attorneys hours before ban hearing: report

President Trump’s administration on Tuesday made a last-minute decision to change lawyers just hours before a hearing on the president’s controversial immigration ban, according to Bloomberg.

{mosads}The Justice Department made the change after it learned that Jones Day, a large Cleveland-based law firm and a former employer of the two lawyers, filed a brief on Monday opposing the executive order. 

Acting Associate Attorney General Chad Readler and Acting Solicitor General Noel Francisco will not be leading the U.S. government’s defense of the executive order “out of an abundance of caution, in light of a last-minute filing of an amicus brief by their former law firm,” the government said, according to Bloomberg.

According to the report, at least a dozen lawyers who have joined the new administration are former employees of Jones Day, including the White House general counsel Donald McGahn.

Bloomberg noted it is common for lawyers who join a new administration to distance themselves from cases that involve their former law firms.

The attorneys will be replaced by long-time Justice Department lawyers August Flentje and Edwin Kneedler.