Type of site | online multimedia publication |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
| Owner | The Lawfare Institute |
| Editors | Benjamin Wittes, Roger Parloff |
| URL | www |
| Commercial | No |
| Launched | September 1, 2010 |
| Current status | Active |
Lawfare is an American non-profit blog dedicated to national security issues, published by The Lawfare Institute in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. [1] [2] It has received attention for articles on Donald Trump's presidency.
Lawfare was founded as a blog in September 2010 [3] by Benjamin Wittes (a former editorial writer for The Washington Post ), Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith, and University of Texas at Austin law professor Robert Chesney. [2] Goldsmith was the head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the George W. Bush administration's Justice Department, and Chesney served on a detention-policy task force in the Obama administration. [2] Its writers include law professors, law students, and former George W. Bush and Barack Obama administration officials. [2]
On June 28, 2023, Wittes said that Lawfare has become "a full-featured multimedia magazine" rather than blog. [4]
Lawfare's coverage of intelligence and legal matters related to the Trump administration has brought the website significant increases in readership and national attention. [5] [6]
In January 2017 President Donald Trump tweeted "LAWFARE" and quoted a line from one of its posts that criticized the reasoning in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that blocked Trump's first refugee-and-travel ban. [2] [7] [8] The Lawfare piece called the ban "incompetent malevolence". [2] Trump tweeted the excerpt minutes after the line was quoted on Morning Joe . [7] Wittes, who supported the court ruling, criticized Trump for the tweet, asserting that Trump distorted the argument presented in the article. [8]
On May 18, 2017, Lawfare's editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes was the principal source of an extensive New York Times report about President Trump's interactions with FBI Director James Comey, who is a friend of Wittes, and how those interactions related to Comey's subsequent firing. [9] Wittes also provided a 25-minute interview to PBS NewsHour on the same subject. According to him, Trump's hug "disgusted" Comey. [10] Wittes said Comey was not expecting a hug, adding "It was bad enough there was going to be a handshake." [9]
Several Lawfare contributors argued that Trump's reported disclosure of classified intelligence to Russia in mid-May 2017 was "perhaps the gravest allegation of presidential misconduct in the scandal-ridden four months of the Trump administration". The column further alleged that Trump's reported actions "may well be a violation of the President's oath of office". [11] [12]
Columnist David Ignatius described Lawfare as "one of the most fair-minded chroniclers of national security issues". [13]
The website has been criticized by attorney and journalist Glenn Greenwald. He said it has a "courtier Beltway mentality" devoted to "serving, venerating and justifying the acts of those in power". [2]
James Brien Comey Jr. is an American lawyer who was the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2013 until his termination in May 2017. Comey was a registered Republican for most of his adult life but in 2016 he stated he was unaffiliated.
The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a United States federal law enforcement agency, and is responsible for its day-to-day operations. The FBI director is appointed for a single 10-year term by the president of the United States and confirmed by the Senate. The FBI is an agency within the Department of Justice (DOJ), and thus the director reports to the attorney general of the United States.
Ainsley Earhardt is an American conservative television host and author. She is a co-host of Fox & Friends.
Jack Landman Goldsmith III is an American legal scholar. He serves as the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he has written extensively in the fields of international law, civil procedure, federal courts, conflict of laws, and national security law. Writing in The New York Times, Jeffrey Rosen described him as being "widely considered one of the brightest stars in the conservative legal firmament".
Benjamin Wittes is an American legal journalist. He is editor in chief of Lawfare and senior fellow in governance studies at The Brookings Institution, where he is the research director in public law, and co-director of the Harvard Law School–Brookings Project on Law and Security. He works principally on issues related to American law and national security. Wittes was number 15 on the Politico 50 of 2017, described as "Bard of the Deep State".
Robert M. "Bobby" Chesney is an American lawyer and the Dean of the University of Texas School of Law. He is the Charles I. Francis Professor in Law and was the associate dean for academic affairs before becoming the dean. Chesney teaches courses relating to U.S. national security and constitutional law. He is also the director of the Strauss Center for International Security and Law. Chesney addresses issues involving national security and law, including matters relating to military detention, the use of force, terrorism-related prosecutions, the role of the courts in national security affairs and the relationship between military and intelligence community activities. He is a co-founder and contributor along with Benjamin Wittes and Jack Goldsmith to the Lawfare Blog. He also co-hosts The National Security Law Podcast with former Texas law professor, now at Georgetown Law, Stephen Vladeck.
Michael S. Schmidt is an American journalist, author, and correspondent for The New York Times in Washington, D.C. He is also a producer of a Netflix show. He covers national security and federal law enforcement, and has broken several high-profile stories about politics, media and sports. He is also a national security contributor for MSNBC and NBC News.
Stephen Isaiah Vladeck is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center where he specializes in the federal courts, constitutional law, national security law, and military justice, especially with relation to the prosecution of war crimes. Vladeck has commented on the legality of the United States' use of extrajudicial detention and torture, and is a regular contributor to CNN.
Dana James Boente ( Bent-Ë) is an American attorney who served as General Counsel of the FBI from January 2018 to 2020, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia from September 2013 to January 2018, and as the Acting United States Attorney General from January to February 2017. He also served as acting assistant attorney general for the National Security Division of the United States Department of Justice. On October 27, 2017, Boente announced he would resign from the Department of Justice after a successor is in place. On January 23, 2018, Boente was named general counsel to the FBI by the director Christopher A. Wray, filling the vacancy after James Baker's reassignment to another part of the bureau.
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is an American conservative author, columnist, and political commentator. She is the editor in chief of the online magazine The Federalist and a contributor for Fox News.
Chuck Rosenberg is an American attorney who served as Acting Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration from 2015 to 2017. He formerly served as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) and for the Southern District of Texas; as a senior FBI official on the staff of two FBI Directors; as Counselor to the Attorney General; as the Chief of Staff to the Deputy Attorney General; and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia in Norfolk and Alexandria.
Donald Trump's tenure as the 45th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican from New York City, took office following his Electoral College victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, in which he lost the popular vote to Clinton by nearly three million votes. Upon his inauguration, he became the first president in American history without prior public office or military background. Trump made an unprecedented number of false or misleading statements during his campaign and presidency. His presidency ended following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election to former Democratic vice president Joe Biden, after one term in office.
The social policy of the Donald Trump administration was generally socially conservative. As of 2016, Donald Trump described himself as pro-life with exceptions for rape, incest, and circumstances endangering the life of the mother. He said he was committed to appointing justices who may overturn the ruling in Roe v. Wade. Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices during his presidency. All of them later went on to vote in the majority opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the Supreme Court case overturning Roe v. Wade and ending federal abortion rights nationwide.
Sarah Elizabeth Huckabee Sanders is an American politician serving since 2023 as the 47th governor of Arkansas. Sanders is the daughter of Mike Huckabee, who served from 1996 to 2007 as Arkansas's 44th governor. A member of the Republican Party, she was the 31st White House press secretary, serving under President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2019. Sanders was the third woman to be White House press secretary. She also served as a senior advisor on Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Sanders became the Republican nominee in the 2022 Arkansas gubernatorial election and won, defeating Democratic nominee Chris Jones.
Many organizations reacted to the enactment of Executive Order 13769, titled "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States," which was an executive order issued by United States President Donald Trump. Domestically, the order was criticized by Democratic and Republican members of Congress, universities, business leaders, major corporations, Catholic bishops, and Jewish organizations. Some 1,000 U.S. diplomats signed a dissent cable opposing the order, setting a record. Public opinion was divided, with initial national polls yielding inconsistent results. Protests against the order erupted in airports and cities.
Executive Order 13780, titled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, was an executive order signed by United States President Donald Trump on March 6, 2017. It placed a 90-day restriction on entry to the U.S. by nationals of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, and barred entry for all refugees who did not possess either a visa or valid travel documents for 120 days. This executive order—sometimes called "Travel Ban 2.0"—revoked and replaced Executive Order 13769 issued on January 27, 2017.
James Comey, the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was fired by U.S. President Donald Trump on May 9, 2017. Comey had been criticized in 2016 for his handling of the FBI's investigation of the Hillary Clinton email controversy and in 2017 for the FBI's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections as it related to alleged collusion with Trump's presidential campaign.
Donald Trump's handling of United States government records, especially those containing classified information, during his tenure as the 45th U.S. president has come under scrutiny. A number of incidents in which the president disclosed classified information to foreign powers and private individuals have become publicly known, sometimes with distinct national security and diplomatic consequences.
Donald Trump's use of social media attracted attention worldwide since he joined Twitter in May 2009. Over nearly twelve years, Trump tweeted around 57,000 times, including about 8,000 times during the 2016 election campaign and over 25,000 times during his presidency. The White House said the tweets should be considered official statements. When Twitter banned Trump from the platform in January 2021 during the final days of his term, his handle @realDonaldTrump had over 88.9 million followers. On November 19, 2022, Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, reinstated his account, although Trump had stated he would not use it in favor of his own social media platform, Truth Social. The first tweet since 2021 was made in August 2023 about his mugshot from Fulton County Jail, but the account remained inactive until he tweeted again in August 2024.
The Mueller report, officially titled Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, is the official report documenting the findings and conclusions of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 United States presidential election, allegations of conspiracy or coordination between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia, and allegations of obstruction of justice. The report was submitted to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019, and a redacted version of the 448-page report was publicly released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on April 18, 2019. It is divided into two volumes. The redactions from the report and its supporting material were placed under a temporary "protective assertion" of executive privilege by then-President Trump on May 8, 2019, preventing the material from being passed to Congress, despite earlier reassurance by Barr that Trump would not exert privilege.
