# Skadden Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom — one of the largest American law firms. It enters the vault twice, at both ends of the Trump era: in 2012 it produced a report that the government of [[Viktor Yanukovych]], through [[Paul Manafort]], used to defend the jailing of Yanukovych's rival; in 2025 it was among the big firms that made a deal with the second Trump administration rather than fight an executive order like [[Perkins Coie]]. > [!note] Sourcing > Second-sourced on 2026-09-29 (CNN, DOJ, CBS, CNBC, The Lawyer, Reuters). The 2020 Tymoshenko settlement figure still rests on Wikipedia alone. ## The Ukraine report | Date | Event | |---|---| | 2012 | Skadden writes a report for Yanukovych's justice ministry on the prosecution of former prime minister [[Yulia Tymoshenko]]; Manafort arranged the engagement and his team used the report to defend her imprisonment abroad | | Feb 20, 2018 | Skadden associate Alex van der Zwaan pleads guilty to lying to Mueller's investigators about his contacts with [[Rick Gates]] and [[Konstantin Kilimnik]]; he serves 30 days and is later pardoned by Trump (Dec 2020) | | Jan 17, 2019 | Skadden pays **$4.6 million** to settle with the Justice Department over its failure to register as a foreign agent, and registers retroactively | | Sept 4, 2019 | Former White House counsel Greg Craig, who led the report, is acquitted of a false-statements charge | | 2020 | Skadden reportedly pays Tymoshenko at least $11 million to settle her claim before she sued | See [[Paul Manafort Ukraine Operations]]. ## The 2025 deal On **March 28, 2025**, Trump announced that Skadden had agreed to provide **$100 million** in pro bono legal work for causes the administration supports, avoiding the kind of executive order that [[Perkins Coie]], Jenner & Block, WilmerHale and Susman Godfrey fought and beat in court. Skadden was one of nine firms that made such deals. The deal did not end the pressure. On **July 17, 2026** the Justice Department subpoenaed 13 large firms targeted by the 2025 orders — Skadden among them, along with Paul, Weiss, Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins and others — as part of its defense against the American Bar Association's lawsuit over the policy, seeking the firms' communications about the executive orders and about Trump adviser [[Boris Epshteyn]]. (Earlier summaries describing this as an investigation of Skadden's deal itself overstate it.) ## Why it matters here The same firm helped a pro-Russian Ukrainian government justify jailing its opponent and, thirteen years later, helped establish that the largest American law firms would pay rather than fight a president who threatened them. See [[Trump Retribution Doctrine]]. ## See Also - [[Paul Manafort]] · [[Paul Manafort Ukraine Operations]] · [[Viktor Yanukovych]] - [[Rick Gates]] · [[Konstantin Kilimnik]] · [[Mueller Investigation]] - [[Perkins Coie]] · [[Trump Retribution Doctrine]]