The Lawfare Podcast

Patrick Radden Keefe, a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of “ Say Nothing ” and “ Empire of Pain ,” sits down with  Lawfare  Associate Editor Peter Beck to discuss his most recent book, “ London Falling .” The two talk about Radden Keefe’s investigation of a London teenager’s fatal plunge into the Thames, the United Kingdom’s acquiescence to foreign influence, and...

Lawfare  Senior Editor Kate Klonick speaks with former Deputy Solicitor General  Michael Dreeben ; lecturer in law at Stanford,  Richard Salgado ; and attorney  Adam Unikowsky , to discuss the geofencing Fourth Amendment case that was  heard Monday, April 27  in the Supreme Court,  Chatrie v. United States. They discuss the background of the case with their uniqu...

In a live conversation on YouTube , Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Molly Roberts, and Roger Parloff and Lawfare Contributing Editor Nicholas Bednar to discuss the second indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, a judge finding that he has jurisdiction over Maureen Comey’s litigation challenging the Justice Department’s firing of her l...

From June 9, 2017: As the dust settles following former FBI Director James Comey’s  testimony  before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the  Lawfare Podcast  brings you expert views on what exactly happened yesterday and what it means for the Trump administration going forward. Benjamin Wittes sat down with Carrie Cordero, a former attorney at the National Security Division of...

From June 26, 2024: On June 10, the jury reached a verdict in the federal trial against Chiquita Banana. It found that the company had financed a paramilitary group in Colombia in the late 1990s and early 2000s, resulting in the deaths of eight men, and it awarded the victims' families $38 million in damages. It's the culmination of a 17-year-long multi-district litigation that had faced significa...

In this episode of Scaling Laws , we explore how the "black box" of global greenhouse gas emissions is being cracked open by artificial intelligence and satellite imagery. Kevin Frazier is joined by Gavin McCormick, who leads Watt Time and ClimateTrace, a global coalition that has revolutionized the process of identifying and quantifying emissions. For decades, climate policy has relied on self-re...

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Executive Editor Natalie Orpett and Contributing Editors Ariane Tabatabai and Joel Braunold, to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including: “The Art of the Heel.” As it approaches the 60-day mark, the war of Iran appears to have entered the “war of attrition” stage. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed by both Iran and...

Lawfare  Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with  Chinmayi Sharma , an associate professor at Fordham Law School and a contributing editor at  Lawfare , to discuss Sharma’s  forthcoming law review article, “Immigration Enforcement Intermediaries.” They discuss the U.S. federal government’s increasingly privatized and automated system of immigration enforcement—which Sharma...

In 1979, a man using a pseudonym built a strange monument in Elberton, Georgia. Called “America’s Stonehenge" by some, the massive granite monolith known as the Georgia Guidestones attracted conspiracy theories and controversy until July 2022, when someone blew them up. Those two mysteries—who built the Guidestones and who destroyed them—are at the heart of  a new narrative podcast series fro...

Lawfare Book Review Editor Jonathan Cedarbaum sits down with Anja Shortland, professor of political economy at King's College London, to discuss her new book, " Dark Screens: Hackers and Heroes in the Shadowy World of Ransomware ." The book offers a history of the development of ransomware into perhaps the most important form of cyber crime, costing the global economy $75 billion a year....

In a live conversation on YouTube , Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, and Roger Parloff and Lawfare Public Service Fellow Troy Edwards to discuss the indictment of the SPLC, the DOJ dropping its investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell, the government’s renewed attempt to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and more. You can find inf...

From December 17, 2024: CNN correspondent Elle Reeve has spent the last decade reporting on extremism in the United States.  Her book , "Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society and Capture American Politics" provides an insider's glimpse into the "insidious"—and underestimated—world of alt-right internet culture that is now at the center of...

From August 5, 2022: A few weeks ago on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information system, we brought you a conversation with two emergency room doctors about their efforts to push back against members of their profession spreading falsehoods about the coronavirus. Today, we’re going to take a look at another profession that’s been struggling to counter lies and falsehoods within its...

Geoffrey Pipoly and Andrew Tauber, partners at the Bryan Cave law firm, speak with Senior Editor Roger Parloff about their case, known at the Supreme Court level as Trump v. Miot . In it, they have been fighting to preserve Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 350,000 Haitian immigrants. The Court is hearing the case on April 29, along with Mullin v. Dahlia Doe , which concerns the gover...

On today's episode, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sits down with several leading experts to break down the recent ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel and what it might mean for their ongoing conflict, and the broader conflict with Iran. Joel Braunold is a contributing editor at Lawfare as well as the managing director of the Center Project. Dan Byman is a foreign policy editor at Lawfar...

On today’s episode,  Lawfare  Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Lawrence Douglas, the James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought at Amherst College to discuss  Douglas’s new book, “The Criminal State: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice.” They talk about how and why international criminal justice shifted from a focus at Nurembe...

In  her recent profile of Harmeet Dhillon , the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice, The Atlantic’s Quinta Jurecic writes, “Dhillon’s leadership of the division is both the next step in the natural progression of a career spent needling liberals and a preview of what is to come if she continues to rise within the Justice Department.” But, Jurecic notes, Dh...

In a live conversation on YouTube , Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, and Roger Parloff to discuss the disbarment of John Eastman, the Justice Department dropping the last Jan. 6 criminal matters, a warrant issued in the first state criminal charges against an ICE agent, the firing of 6 immigration judges, and more. You can find...

From October 25, 2024: Hunter Marston, PhD candidate at the Australian National University and Southeast Asia Associate at 9DashLine, joins Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at  Lawfare , to explore the economic and geopolitical significance of the South China Sea. Hunter leans on his extensive knowledge of Southeast Asian politics...

From January 6, 2025: On today’s podcast,  Lawfare  Senior Editor and Brookings Senior Fellow Molly Reynolds is joined by Quinta Jurecic, a Fellow at Brookings and Senior Editor at  Lawfare , and Ryan Reilly, Justice Reporter at NBC News, to discuss a long-awaited report on Jan. 6 from the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, as well as a new report from House Republicans focu...

The Justice Department has moved the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to drop the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys seditious conspiracy cases, the last remaining criminal matters arising from the Jan. 6 insurrection. Lawfare’ s editor in chief, Benjamin Wittes, sits down with four contributors who had intimate involvement with the cases to discuss the decision: Senior Editor Roger Parloff, who covered bot...

Ben McKenzie, co-author of “ Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud ,” and writer and director of the new documentary, “ Everyone Is Lying to You for Money ,” sits down with Lawfare Senior Editor Michael Feinberg about his years-long deep dive into the cryptocurrency industry and why his research makes him skeptical of its literal and figurative value. To receiv...

Lawfare Senior Editor Michael Feinberg and historian Frank Dikötter, the author of “ Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity ,” discuss the early years of the Chinese communist movement, the American reaction to its successes, and how our current understanding of the era greatly differs from our previous assumptions. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a  Lawfare&nb...

Senior Editor Kate Klonick interviews reporters Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz on their recent article in the New Yorker, titled “ Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted? ”   In their 16,000-word piece, Farrow and Marantz create a cohesive narrative with receipts around Sam Altman, the products he's building at OpenAI, and how he's selling them not just to investors and the...

In a live conversation on YouTube , Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Molly Roberts, Eric Columbus, and Roger Parloff to discuss Judge Friedman rejecting the Defense Department’s revised press rules, the D.C. Circuit denying Anthropic’s petition for a stay pending review of the enforcement of its supply chain designation, Judge Sorokin rejecting the Justi...