The Lawfare Podcast

By The Lawfare Institute

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What's The Lawfare Podcast about?

The Lawfare Podcast features discussions with experts, policymakers, and opinion leaders at the nexus of national security, law, and policy. On issues from foreign policy, homeland security, intelligence, and cybersecurity to governance and law, we have doubled down on seriousness at a time when others are running away from it. Visit us at www.lawfareblog.com. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Trump’s Trials and Tribulat...

09.30.2023

It's another episode of Lawfare's live Thursday show, “Trump’s Trials and Tribulations,” a tour around four courts. This week, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Legal Fellow Anna Bower and Lawfare Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson and Roger ...

The Lawfare Podcast episodes:

09.30.2023 Trump’s Trials and Tribulations: A Trip Through Four Courts It's another episode of Lawfare's live Thursday show, “Trump’s Trials and Tribulations,” a tour around four courts. This week, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Legal Fellow Anna Bower and Lawfare Senior Editors Scott R. Anderson and Roger ...
09.30.2023 Lawfare Archive: General Austin as Secretary of Defense From December 9, 2020: President-elect Joe Biden has selected a new defense secretary, retired general Lloyd Austin, former commander of Central Command. The selection has received somewhat mixed reviews, and to discuss why, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Brookings senior ...
09.29.2023 Robert Silvers on the Cyber Safety Review Board The Cyber Safety Review Board was created by a Biden administration Executive Order entitled, “Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity.” The Board reviews major cyber events and makes concrete recommendations that can drive improvements within the private and public sectors. Lawfare Senior ...
09.28.2023 Chatter: Governing Space Settlements Ethically with Erika Nesvold As humanity builds settlements beyond Earth, myriad ethical issues will arise--many in a different way than they do terrestrially. Astrophysicist and space communicator Erika Nesvold has devoted extensive thought and research to how to ethically govern space settlements, most notably ...
09.28.2023 Ken Chesebro’s Upcoming Trial Next month, Kenneth Chesebro—the alleged architect of the fake electors plot—is set to be tried in Fulton County, Georgia, on racketeering and other charges. This week, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes and Lawfare Legal Fellow and Courts Correspondent Anna Bower sat ...
09.27.2023 A Conversation on Domestic Intelligence with Kenneth Wainstein On September 19, Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, Kenneth Wainstein, gave a speech at the Brookings Institution on the current threat environment and the role of the Department of Homeland Security's Intelligence and ...
09.26.2023 Human Rights Abuses in Saudi Arabia with Joey Shea On August 21, the Human Rights Watch released a report detailing systematic abuses of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers at the Saudi Arabia-Yemen border. Researchers interviewed dozens of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers and found that Saudi border guards had ...
09.25.2023 An Update on Ukraine For the past several months, Ukraine has been engaged in a grinding counteroffensive aimed at retaking lost territory from Russian invaders. Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky joined President Biden for the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York to ...
09.24.2023 Rational Security: The “Sara-FIN” Edition This week on Rational Security, Quinta and Scott were joined by Lawfare colleagues Eric Ciaramella and Saraphin Dhanani, the latter for her last episode of RatSec before departing Lawfare, to break down the week’s big national security news stories, including:“UNGA ...
09.23.2023 Trump’s Trials and Tribulations: Removal, Gag Orders, and Disqualification, Oh My This past Thursday, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson hosted “Trump’s Trials and Tribulations,” Lawfare’s weekly live video chat about developments in the many ongoing trials circulating around former President Trump. He was joined by Lawfare’s two leading court reporters, ...
09.23.2023 Lawfare Archive: An NSI Conversation on U.S.-China Policy From May 25, 2019: Our friends from the National Security Institute at George Mason University stopped by earlier this week to discuss U.S.-China relations. Lester Munson, Jodi Herman, Jamil Jaffer, and Dana Stroul, former Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers who ...
09.22.2023 How States Think It is commonplace for American leaders to describe their fiercest foreign adversaries as irrational, crazy, delusional, or illogical. In their new book, “How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy,” political scientists John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and ...
09.21.2023 Chatter: Secret Intelligence and the British Royal Family with Rory Cormac The British royal family and UK intelligence operations have been linked since Queen Victoria's time, involving everything from personal protection to matters of international intrigue to concerns about blackmail. Professor and author Rory Cormac, who has conducted extensive research on ...
09.21.2023 The Tyranny of the Minority with Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt Democratic backsliding, a term that American political scientists usually use to describe the process by which other countries transition to autocracy, has come home. Freedom House’s Global Freedom Index, which attempts to track the health of democracies around the world, ...
09.20.2023 A Weaponized World Economy with Henry Farrell and Abe Newman Economic warfare isn’t a new concept. Protectionist policies, asymmetrical trade agreements, currency wars—those are just a few examples of the economic levers states have long used to control outcomes. But in their new book, two political scientists, Henry Farrell and ...
09.19.2023 The Mechanisms for Cybersecurity Aid with Eugenia Lostri This week, the UN General Assembly will meet in New York to discuss, among other things, international cooperation to improve global cyber security challenges. This meeting builds on national and international commitments and initiatives that have already been made this ...
09.18.2023 Trump’s Presidential Immunity Defense with Saraphin Dhanani and Benjamin Wittes Some time soon, former President Donald Trump is expected to file a motion in U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s courtroom to dismiss the Jan. 6 case against him based on some theory of presidential immunity. In a recent piece for ...
09.17.2023 Rational Security: The “We Need to Talk About Kevin ... Again” Edition This week on Rational Security, with Scott traveling, Quinta and Alan were joined by Lawfare Senior Editor Molly Reynolds to break down the week’s big national security news stories, including:“What is Impeachment, Really?” Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has ...
09.16.2023 Trump’s Trials and Tribulations: An Update from Courthouses Around the Country It's another episode of “Trump’s Trials and Tribulations,” our weekly video conversation with Lawfare editors and writers on the ongoing Trump trials. On Thursday afternoon, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff and Lawfare Legal ...
09.16.2023 Lawfare Archive: Iran, the U.S. and the Middle East at a Turning Point From February 16, 2021: The Biden administration has promised significant changes to the U.S. relationship with Iran that could have a marked impact on the Middle East. What is the likelihood that this new administration will be successful? And how ...
09.15.2023 The Question of Removal The question of whether the Fulton County trial of Donald Trump and his co-defendants will be removed to federal court is now before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and it's on its way to the Supreme Court. Judge Steve ...
09.14.2023 Chatter: Shane Harris Wants to Believe Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy ...
09.14.2023 Climate Migration and National Security It’s been another brutal summer with seemingly constant natural disasters precipitated by climate change. The United States and other countries have rightfully begun thinking of climate change as a security issue. But extreme weather is not the only challenge we ...
09.13.2023 Much Ado About Coups with Naunihal Singh On August 30, soldiers and high-ranking officers of the Armed Forces of Gabon seized control of government buildings and communication channels in the capital city of Libreville, detaining Gabon’s President Ali Bongo in his residence and declaring an end to ...
09.12.2023 The Global Battle to Regulate Technology The United States, the European Union, and China are involved in intense conflicts to control the digital economy, both within their borders and globally. Anu Bradford, the Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia Law School, ...
09.11.2023 What Impact did Facebook Have on the 2020 Elections? How much influence do social media platforms have on American politics and society? It’s a tough question for researchers to answer—not just because it’s so big, but also because platforms rarely if ever provide all the data that would be ...
09.10.2023 Rational Security: The "2nd Anniversary Hot Take Takedown" Edition This week on Rational Security, Alan, Quinta, and Scott celebrated the second anniversary of Rational Security 2.0 by bringing back everyone's favorite game show edition: the Hot Take Takedown! But this year, instead of being contestants, they sat in judgment ...
09.09.2023 Special Edition: Proud Boys Sentencing and Georgia Wrangling It's another episode of our weekly live stream series, “Trump's Trials and Tribulations,” which takes place on YouTube each week on Thursday afternoons at 4 p.m. ET. This week, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor Roger ...
09.09.2023 Lawfare Archive: Dan Hemel and Gerard Magliocca on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment From January 19, 2021: In the wake of the January 6 mob attack on the Capitol, some have called for the invocation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Section 3 disqualifies anyone who has engaged in rebellion or insurrection ...
09.08.2023 Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times Liberalism today is under attack, as it often has been. Samuel Moyn, the Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University, believes that liberalism's failures, and a path to its better future, can be discerned through a study ...
09.07.2023 Chatter: A Spy in the Manhattan Project with Steve James When he was 18 years old, Ted Hall, then a Harvard undergraduate, was recruited to join the Manhattan Project, becoming the youngest physicist on the U.S. team racing to build an atomic bomb before the Nazis. When it became clear ...
09.07.2023 Kate Hanniford on the SEC’s New Cyber Disclosure Rule On July 26, the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a final rule with new compliance and disclosure obligations surrounding material cybersecurity incidents. Lawfare Senior Editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Kate Hanniford, partner at Alston & Bird, to talk about ...
09.06.2023 How to Implement Section 3 Disqualification, with Ned Foley and Derek Muller As the 2024 presidential election inches closer, legal scholars are hotly debating whether former President Trump’s actions in relation to Jan. 6 might have disqualified him (and many others) from public office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. But ...
09.05.2023 The Coming Wave There is no more consequential technological development in recent years than widely accessible artificial intelligence. And there are few more consequential contemporary figures in the artificial intelligence field than Mustafa Suleyman, who is the co-founder of DeepMind Technologies, an early ...
09.04.2023 Lawfare Archive: Canada Takes on the Proud Boys From February 12, 2021: Lost in the shuffle of an impeachment trial here in the United States was big news from Canada last week. Canada’s Minister of Public Safety added the Proud Boys to Canada’s terror entity list. The listing ...
09.03.2023 Rational Security: The “Gone ‘Til September” Edition This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott reunited to talk through the week’s big national security news, including:“Pack Your Knives and Go Home.” Vladimir Putin’s top chef has been eliminated. Wagner mercenary chief and Kremlin caterer Yevgeny Prighozin was killed in ...
09.02.2023 Special Edition: Trump Trials and Tribulations, An Update Today we’re bringing you a special edition of the Lawfare Podcast: another episode of our series, Trump Trials and Tribulations, recorded live on YouTube before an audience of Lawfare Material Supporters. On Thursday, Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with ...
09.02.2023 Lawfare Archive: Geeking Out on Al-Nashiri with Michel Paradis and Bob Loeb From September 3, 2016: Michel Paradis, a senior attorney in the Department of Defense’s Office of the Chief Defense Counsel and counsel for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, came on the podcast to talk about the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals' recent ...
09.01.2023 The National Intelligence Strategy with Michael Collins of the National Intelligence Council The National Intelligence Strategy is out, and David Kris, a founder of Culper Partners, sat down to talk about it with Michael Collins, the acting head of the National Intelligence Council. They discussed many aspects of U.S. national security, defense, ...
08.31.2023 Chatter: Geopolitics and the Rise of the English Language with Rosemary Salomone The English language has recently developed a historically unique dominance in the global marketplace--a situation that brings plenty of benefits and just as many downsides. Rosemary Salomone, Kenneth Wang Professor of Law at St. John's University, has researched and analyzed ...
08.31.2023 The Potential for an Afghan Adjustment Act Yesterday marked the two-year anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Around 80,000 Afghans were relocated during the withdrawal, and many do not have a pathway to permanent citizenship here in the United States. To get a sense of those ...
08.30.2023 Josh Goldfoot on Cybersecurity as a Legal Problem What do we mean when we talk about "cybersecurity"? There's clearly a technical component: can someone prevent, through clever hardware and software, someone else from accessing some device or data? But that just raises the question of who should have ...
08.29.2023 Two Cities, Two Hearings Yesterday, August 28, was a busy day in court. In federal court in Atlanta, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows made the argument for why the charges against him in Fulton County should instead be tried before a ...
08.28.2023 An Earthshaking Election in Guatemala On August 20, Guatemalans elected a new president, Bernardo Arévalo. His landslide victory was also a major win for the country’s struggling democracy. An unexpectedly strong candidate who ran on an anti-corruption platform, Arévalo triumphed despite months of dirty tricks ...
08.27.2023 Rational Security: The “Damn Danville!” Edition This week on Rational Security, Quinta and Scott were joined by Lawfare Executive Editor Natalie Orpett to break down the week’s big national security news stories, including:“Home to Roost.” A judge in the military commission trying Abdul Raheem al-Nashiri, a ...
08.26.2023 Special Edition: Last Week in the Trump Trials Today we’re bringing you a recording of our live virtual event from this past Thursday. It’s part of our series, Trump Trials and Tribulations, where we provide regular updates on what’s going on in the criminal trials of Donald Trump ...
08.26.2023 Lawfare Archive: Trump Gives Classified Material to the Russians From May 15, 2017: This afternoon, the Washington Post broke a major story: Donald Trump disclosed highly classified material to the Russian ambassador and Foreign Minister in the Oval Office last week, compromising a highly sensitive counterterrorism program run by ...
08.25.2023 A Chilling Violation of Press Freedoms in Marion, Kansas Earlier this month, there was big trouble in little Marion, Kansas, where an entire police department raided the offices of the Marion County Record, a small, family-owned newspaper about 60 miles north of Wichita, with seven employees and a circulation ...
08.24.2023 Chatter: The ERAS Tour (Ben’s Version) with Benjamin Wittes On April 13, 2022, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes conducted his first “special military operation” at the Russian embassy in Washington, DC. Now, Wittes is conducting these protests abroad on ...
08.24.2023 Unpacking Cyber Diplomacy with Ambassador Nathalie Jaarsma This week, the UN ad hoc committee tasked with elaborating a cybercrime convention is meeting in New York. Delegates will be involved in in-depth negotiations of the draft convention, ahead of the concluding session in January 2024. The cybercrime convention ...

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