The Lawfare Podcast

The Jan. 6 select committee has wrapped up its first spree of hearings, and it has announced a second set of hearings when Congress returns in September. The month of lull gives us a good opportunity to assess where the committee has come so far and where it might be going. Benjamin Wittes sat down in Twitter Spaces on Thursday with Lawfare ’s executive editor and host of The Aftermath Natalie Orp...

The country of Tunisia is in the midst of a slow motion political crisis. The country's populist president has crafted a new constitution that gives him broad, unchecked powers and secured its approval by referendum, albeit a referendum in which most Tunisians did not participate. What's not clear is whether other factions will acquiesce to his exceptional actions, and whether those actions will p...

The FBI on Monday conducted a surprise search of Donald Trump's home and resort at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The investigation appeared to involve the retention of classified information by the former president after he left the White House. There's not a whole lot of information, but Trump did confirm the search. To go through it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down on Twitter Spaces with Lawfare senior ed...

Last month, The Intercept published a new investigation from Alice Speri and Nick Turse looking into a secretive funding authority at the Pentagon known as 127e, or 127-echo. Using exclusive documents and interviews, the reporters revealed how U.S. Special Operations forces are involved in a proxy war program on a significantly larger scale than previously known.  To discuss the program and w...

On July 29, the Justice Department announced the indictment of Aleksandr Ionov, a Russian national and president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia. Ionov is charged with “conspiring to have U.S. citizens act as illegal agents of the Russian government”—and the Justice Department alleges that he was essentially running a years-long influence operation within the United States on behalf o...

This week on Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by favorite guest  Lawfare  executive editor Natalie Orpett to hash through the week's big national security news stories, including: “Another One Bites the Dust.” This past weekend, an American drone strike  successfully killed yet another major terrorist leader —this time al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri—in...

From September 22, 2018: If you ask scientists what is most likely to kick off the next great wave of technological change, a good number will answer “quantum mechanics”—a field whose physics Albert Einstein once described as “spooky,” but whose potential, once tapped, could unleash exponentially faster computer processes, unbreakable cryptography, and new frontiers in surveillance technology. No...

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 ranks: the law. Recen...

Nancy Pelosi made a visit to Taiwan this week. It wasn't exactly a surprise—we all knew it was happening—but it wasn't announced, and it wasn't quite official either. Beijing has gone a little bit crazy. There are military exercises taking place off the coast of Taiwan in response. There are threats of war. There was even talk of shooting down Pelosi's plane.  To talk it all through, Benjamin...

Another day, another leader of al-Qaeda is killed by U.S. forces. This time, it was Ayman al-Zawahiri, killed on his balcony in Kabul by a Hellfire missile strike. To talk about it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson and Lawfare ’s foreign policy editor Daniel Byman. Is it a big deal? Is it kind of old news that we’ve killed yet another al-Qaeda leader? How b...

On May 11, the European Commission announced a new proposal designed to combat online child sexual abuse material. The proposal has drawn notable criticism from major member states, especially Germany, and has raised concerns about the national security risks it could create. To talk through the issues at hand, former Lawfare managing editor Jacob Schulz sat down with two experts, each of whom wro...

There’s been a great deal of debate recently about how to understand the apparently slow pace of the Justice Department’s investigation into Jan. 6, particularly into Donald Trump’s personal role in the insurrection. On Lawfare , editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes  made the case  that everyone should just chill out and let the department do its work, while executive editor Natalie Orpett an...

Fake news has been around for thousands of years in different forms that have changed with media technology, and there's little doubt that it's here to stay. For reasons ranging from human biases to financial incentives to the need for speed, it remains a hard problem. Cindy Otis, who worked for about 10 years at the Central Intelligence Agency as an analyst and a manager, now writes about fake ne...

From March 20, 2018: Shortly before last Sunday’s election in Russia, Alina Polyakova spoke to Liza Osetinskaya, editor of  The Bell  and former editor in chief of Forbes Russia and independent Russian news agency RBC. They discussed the Kremlin’s approach to censorship and how the Putin regime reacted when RBC, under Osetinskaya’s leadership, began covering the Panama Papers. Support th...

John Gotti was the boss of the Gambino Crime Family in New York City and one of America's most notorious mobsters. Nicknamed “The Teflon Don” for his ability to beat criminal charges, Gotti became a celebrity mob boss and was no stranger to law enforcement. Gotti's reign was put to an end by convictions obtained by John Gleeson, a former federal prosecutor, and Gotti's conviction and others that f...

You’ve likely heard that Elon Musk wanted to buy Twitter… and that he is now trying to get out of buying Twitter… and that at first he wanted to defeat the bots on Twitter… but now he’s apparently surprised that there are lots of bots on Twitter. It's a spectacle made for the headlines, but it's also, at its core, a regular old corporate law dispute.  This week on Arbiters of Truth , our seri...

The United States Secret Service is in the spotlight once again—this time because of deleted texts for the time surrounding January 6, 2021—and the organization is reeling. To discuss it, Lawfare publisher David Priess sat down with Juliette Kayyem, formerly assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, who has served on the DHS Homeland Security Advisor...

At the end of its past term, the Supreme Court took up the case of Moore v. Harper , a challenge to North Carolina State Supreme Court rulings on elections that promises to confront the controversial independent state legislature doctrine, which argues that the Constitution empowers state legislatures over other state institutions when it comes to deciding certain election matters. Court watchers...

The Cyber Safety Review Board issued its first major report this month, which focused on the Log4j disaster. So, what is the Cyber Safety Review Board, and what is Log4j? To answer these questions and others, Benjamin Wittes sat down with the deputy chair of the Cyber Safety Review Board, Heather Adkins, and board member Dmitri Alperovitch. They talked about what the board is, where it comes from,...

From July 20, 2020: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War. Though often called the "Forgotten War," the Korean War has highly conditioned much of our contemporary international politics in East Asia, and the people of Korea continue to live with its aftermath, both in the north and in the south. And the shadow of the Korean War looms large over something we often...

Lawfare No Bull is a podcast featuring primary source audio from the world of national security law and policy. This episode features audio from the Jan. 6 committee's eighth public hearing on July 21. The committee focused on former President Trump's actions and inactions during the insurrection, describing in detail the three hours during which the mob overran the Capitol and Trump refused to in...

The final hearing in the spree of hearings the Jan. 6 committee has put on this summer took place Thursday evening during prime time. It focused on Donald Trump's personal conduct in the period in which the riot was taking place. To debrief on it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down in Twitter Spaces with Lawfare publisher David Priess, Lawfare executive editor Natalie Orpett, and Lawfare senior editors...

The false claims of election fraud and other controversies that followed the 2020 election brought to light a number of frailties in the United States system for selecting presidents. Several have their origins in the Electoral Count Act, an 1887 law whose vagaries played a central role in efforts by John Eastman and other supporters of former President Trump to keep him in the White House, despit...

When the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , overturning Roe v. Wade, the impact of the decision on the internet may not have been front of mind for most people thinking through the implications. But in the weeks after the Court’s decision, it’s become clear that the post- Dobbs legal landscape around abortion implicates many questions around not...

Over the past two decades, the Chinese government has cooperated extensively with U.S. state governments on economic issues, replacing Canada as the country with the most diplomatic relations with U.S. states. To discuss how we got here and what it means for U.S.-China relations, former Lawfare managing editor Jacob Schulz sat down with Ryan Scoville, professor of law at Marquette University Law S...