It's Not Easy to Sue the President

It's not so easy, it turns out, for Congress to sue the president.

Speaker John Boehner is finding that out the hard way after a second law firm withdrew from representing the House in the Republican-led lawsuit against President Obama over his use—or overuse—of executive authority.
 

William Burck of the Washington-based firm Quinn Emanuel pulled out of the case last month, not long after he signed a contract with the House to replace David Rifkin of BakerHostetler.

In both cases, according to sources working on the issue, the law firms succumbed to political pressure from Democratic clients who threatened to pull their business if the firms represented the House GOP in a partisan suit. Congressional Democrats had decried Boehner's move as a waste of taxpayer money.

They also successfully parlayed the planned lawsuit into a fundraising boon by telling liberal supporters it was a prelude to impeachment, which Boehner insisted was not the case.

But not only did the two firms withdraw, they ditched the case so quickly that neither of them performed enough work to bill the House, sources said. In an odd silver lining for House Republicans, nearly three months after they signed off on the lawsuit, not a single dollar of taxpayer money has been spent.