The Lawfare Podcast

At 4pm ET on Nov. 19, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Molly Roberts, Anna Bower, and Roger Parloff to discuss two court hearings that occurred that day. First they discussed the hearing in the prosecution of James Comey. Then they briefly discussed the hearing in J.G.G. v. Trump, over potential contempt proceedings against the government concerning acti...

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Anna Bower, Michael Feinberg, and Roger Parloff to talk through the week’s big domestic news stories, including: “Diving Head First into the Shallow End of the Jury Pool.” A federal magistrate judge has concluded that the government may well have made substantial misrepresentations and other errors before the Grand Jury in the prosecution of fo...

Benjamin Wittes sits down with Emily Hoge, a historian at Clemson University, who has written a pair of pieces for  Lawfare  recently about  Russian mobsters  and the war in Ukraine. They’re getting out of prison in exchange for service at the front. Some of them are surviving their service there and returning home by way of reward—and the Russian crime rate is skyrocketing as...

Senior Editor Anna Bower speaks with Lawfare Public Service Fellow Michael Feinberg and Senior Editor Eric Columbus about the extraordinary actions taken by the Justice Department and Congress in response to calls for the release of investigative files related to Jeffrey Epstein. The discussion covers the DOJ’s unusual “review” of the Epstein files , Congress’s oversight role, proposed legislation...

In a  live conversation on  YouTube,  Lawfare  Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with  Lawfare  Senior Editors Anna Bower, Roger Parloff and Eric Columbus and  Lawfare  Public Service Fellow Loren Voss to discuss an update in the Georgia prosecution of President Trump, a hearing on whether Lindsey Halligan was lawfully appointed as U.S. attorney, a di...

From August 9, 2024: On today's episode,  Lawfare' s Fellow in Technology Policy and Law Eugenia Lostri speaks with Senior Privacy Engineer at Netflix and former Army Reserve intelligence officer, Lukas Bundonis. They talked about the relationship between law enforcement and tech companies, what that relationship looks like in the U.S. and other countries, and the different ways in which that...

From November 29, 2023: Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard a great deal over the last year about generative AI and how it’s going to reshape various aspects of our society. That includes elections. With one year until the 2024 U.S. presidential election, we thought it would be a good time to step back and take a look at how generative AI might and might not make a differ...

Anton Korinek, a professor of economics at the University of Virginia and newly appointed economist to Anthropic's Economic Advisory Council; Nathan Goldschlag, Director of Research at the Economic Innovation Group; and Bharat Chander, Economist at Stanford Digital Economy Lab, join Kevin Frazier, the AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawf...

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Natalie Orpett, Eric Columbus, and Molly Roberts, to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including: “I Don’t Think You’re Ready for the Shutdown.” The record-setting shutdown of the U.S. government is set to come to an end after eight Democratic senators agreed to a continuing resolution that will fund all of the governm...

In this episode, Michael Feinberg interviews Fareed Zakaria, whose book “ Age of Revolutions ” has just been issued with a new afterword in light of the return of the Trump Administration. The two discuss intellectual, cultural, and populist revolutions from history and what those events have to teach us about our current political moment. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a  Lawfare ...

Lawfare  Senior Editors Kate Klonick and Alan Rozenshtein talk to Columbia law professor Tim Wu about this new book, “ The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity .”   The book is the final part of what Wu calls his trilogy—building on his prior best selling books “The Master Switch” and “Attention Merchants .”&nb...

From September 23, 2024: Lindsay Chervinsky is the Executive Director of the George Washington Library at Mount Vernon. She is also the author of a much celebrated new book on the John Adams presidency that is focused primarily on the national security decision-making of the second president and how it set norms for the conduct of the presidency and its powers with which we still live today. She s...

In a  live conversation on  YouTube,  Lawfare  Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with  Lawfare  Senior Editors Anna Bower, Molly Roberts, Roger Parloff and Eric Columbus to discuss the criminal trial of the man who threw a sandwich at a federal immigration officer in D.C., a hearing in the prosecution of James Comey, litigation over the conditions of an immigra...

From January 22, 2024: There is much debate among academics and policy experts over the power the Constitution affords to the president and Congress to initiate military conflicts. But as Michael Ramsey and Matthew Waxman, law professors at the University of San Diego and Columbia, respectively, point out in a  recent law review article , this focus misses the mark. In fact, the most salient...

From November 6, 2024: For today’s special episode,  Lawfare  General Counsel and Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson held a series of conversations with contributors to a special series of articles on “ The Dangers of Deploying the Military on U.S. Soil ” that  Lawfare  recently published on its website, in coordination with our friends at Protect Democracy. Participants include:...

In a live conversation on November 5, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Lawfare Contributing Editor Peter Harrell and Georgetown Law Professors Marty Lederman and Kathleen Claussen to discuss what occurred during oral arguments in the legal challenge to President Trump’s tariffs at the Supreme Court and how the justices may rule. This episode is a part of Lawfare’s new livestre...

On today’s episode,  Lawfare  Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Joseph Kellner, an assistant professor of history at the University of Georgia to discuss his latest book, “ The Spirit of Socialism: Culture and Belief at the Soviet Collapse ,” which examines the millions of Soviet people who embarked on a “spirited and highly visible search for new meaning” during the...

This week, Scott sat down with co-hosts emeritus Benjamin Wittes and Alan Rozenshtein, and Senior Editor Kate Klonick, to talk through the week’s big national security news stories, including: “Cracks in the Foundation.” The conservative Heritage Foundation—and the broader conservative movement it plays a central role in—has been going through a very public crisis over the past week after its pres...

In this episode, Lawfare ’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Francis Farrell, a front line reporter at the Kyiv Independent, to discuss the looming fall of Pokrovsk, the recent transformations of the front line, and whether Ukraine can ever give up Donbas, per Russia’s demand. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a  Lawfare  Material Supporter at  www.patreon.com/law...

On today’s episode,  Lawfare  Senior Editor Kate Klonick sits down with NYU law professor Rick Pildes to discuss his article, “ Political Fragmentation in Democracies in the West ,” which was featured in a   New York Times opinion column by Thomas Edsall  on the link between smartphone and social media use and threats to democracy. The two discuss the admittedly...

In a  live conversation on  YouTube,  Lawfare  Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with  Lawfare  Contributor Marty Lederman, Public Service Fellow Loren Voss, and Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson, Roger Parloff and Eric Columbus to discuss the Supreme Court’s handling of the legal challenge to the federalization of the National Guard in Chicago, James Comey’s mo...

From July 18, 2024: On today’s episode, Matt Gluck, Research Fellow at  Lawfare , spoke with Michael Beckley, Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts, and Arne Westad, the Elihu Professor of History at Yale. They discussed  Beckley’s  and  Westad’s  articles in Foreign Affairs on the best path forward for the U.S.-China strategic relationship—in the economic and...

From August 27, 2024: On today’s episode, Sherri Goodman, the Secretary General of the International Military Council on Climate & Security and the first Deputy Undersecretary of Defense (Environmental Security) joins  Lawfare  Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to talk about Sherri’s new book,  “Threat Multiplier: Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security.” The...

Alan Rozenshtein, Senior Editor at Lawfare , speaks with Brett Goldstein, Special Advisor to the Chancellor on National Security and Strategic Initiatives at Vanderbilt University; Brett Benson, Associate Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University; and Renée DiResta, Lawfare Contributing Editor and Associate Research Professor at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy...

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Public Service Fellow Ari Tabatabai and Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including: “Great APEC-tations.” President Trump is headed to Asia this week, both for a meeting of the regional Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) organization and a one-on-one sit down with Chinese president Xi...