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 [1] |
| Current status | Active |
Lawfare is an American non-profit online multimedia publication dedicated to national security issues, produced by The Lawfare Institute in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. [2] [3] It has received attention for articles on Donald Trump's first presidency.
Lawfare was founded as a blog in September 2010 [1] 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. [3] 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. [3] Its contributors include legal scholars, law students, and former George W. Bush administration and Barack Obama administration officials. [3]
On June 28, 2023, Wittes said that Lawfare has become "a full-featured multimedia magazine." [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. [3] [7] [8] The Lawfare piece called the ban "incompetent malevolence". [9] 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. [10] Wittes also provided a 25-minute interview to PBS NewsHour on the same subject. According to him, Trump's hug "disgusted" Comey. [11] Wittes said Comey was not expecting a hug, adding "It was bad enough there was going to be a handshake." [10]
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". [12] [13]
Columnist David Ignatius described Lawfare as "one of the most fair-minded chroniclers of national security issues". [14]
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". [3]
