The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
<p>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.lawfaremedia.org.</p><p>Support this show <a target="_blank" rel="payment" href="http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare">http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare</a>.</p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
Recent Episodes
20 episodesLawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, May 29
In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, Roger Parloff, and Molly Roberts to discuss three legal challenges to the Trump administration’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” a federal judge’s decision to stop the shuttering of the Kennedy Center, post-dismissal developments in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, and more.You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here. And check out Lawfare’s new homepage on the litigation, new Bluesky account, and new WITOAD merch.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Archive: White House Pressure, the Justice Department and the Election
From October 9, 2021: The majority staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee has issued an interim report, entitled “Subverting Justice: How the Former President and His Allies Pressured DOJ to Overturn the 2020 Election.” A lot of it covers ground we knew about previously, but it contains a raft of new details about the president's pressure on the Justice Department to support his election fraud claims, the resignation of a U.S. attorney in Georgia, and the bizarre attempt to install as acting attorney general a Justice Department official who might actually support the president's ambitions.To go over it all, Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare senior editors Alan Rozenshtein and Quinta Jurecic, and Lawfare associate editor Bryce Klehm, who has been reading all of the depositions in the matter. They talked about what the committee found, what aspects of it are new and what we might do about this dramatic turn of events.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Archive: The Public Integrity Section, Threats, and Criminal Contempt with John Keller
From May 27, 2025: John Keller, now a partner at Walden, Macht, Haran, & Williams, channeled his experience as the former Chief of the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice to discuss three recent developments with James Pearce, Lawfare Legal Fellow. They discussed proposed changes to the Public Integrity Section that could hamper the Justice Department’s ability to investigate and prosecute corruption matters in a fair and impartial matter.Keller weighed in on whether the Justice Department has a viable prosecution theory for criminal threats or incitement in the case of former FBI Director, Jim Comey. And they discussed criminal contempt: what it is, how it differs from civil contempt, the recent criminal contempt probable-cause finding by Judge Boasberg in an Alien Enemies Act case in the District of Columbia, and whether the federal rule permitting appointment of a special prosecutor outside the Justice Department may pose constitutional separation-of-powers concerns.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: How Ukraine Is Winning the Drone War
Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Jimmy Rushton, a Kyiv-based journalist and security analyst who recently published, “How Ukraine gained the upper hand in the drone war against Russia,” in the Kyiv Independent. They talk about how the balance of power in the drone war seems to have shifted in Ukraine’s favor, Russia's latest missile strike on Kyiv, and what it all means for Russia’s broader strategic position in its war against Ukraine.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Rational Security: The “Potty Like It’s 1999” Edition
This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Anna Bower and Eric Columbus, and his Brookings colleague Molly Reynolds, to talk through a couple of the week’s big news stories in domestic politics, including:“The Grift That Keeps On Giving.” Last week, the Justice Department announced the creation of a so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund of nearly 1.8 billion taxpayer dollars, from which purported victims of politically motivated prosecutions can apply to receive payments. The fund was created as part of a settlement with President Trump and his sons, who sued the IRS for 10 billion dollars over the leak of his tax returns. So far, pardoned Jan. 6 rioters, former Congressman George Santos, Trump’s ex attorney Michael Cohen, and even former FBI Director James Comey have all said that they are considering applying, and three lawsuits have already been filed challenging the fund. How did Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS lead to this fund? And how do we see these legal challenges playing out in court?“Lame Duck Around and Find Out.” President Trump’s preferred primary picks have cruised to victories in Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Georgia Republican primaries, ousting incumbents Senator Bill Cassidy and Representative Thomas Massie as some of the few voices of dissent within the Republican Party. But Trump’s involvement in the primaries has come at a political cost, with outgoing members voicing their criticism and even going so far as to buck the president on legislation. Last week, Cassidy flipped his vote in favor of a critical war powers resolution in the Senate, which could undermine the administration’s legal justification for the war. With such close margins in Congress, how do we expect this new YOLO faction to impact the president’s agenda before the midterms?While we introduced a third topic, we frankly ran out of time this week. Sorry about that! We’ll circle back to it in the weeks ahead.In object lessons, Molly is hooked on the fish-focused local NPR podcast, “Catching The Codfather.” Eric is looking to catch a killer with the latest Hugh Jackman movie (which he thinks is shear perfection). Scott is caught up in the latest “Storm,” featuring Yung Lean. And Anna has caught basketball fever, both with the Knicks’ return to the NBA Finals, and also with the (much-more-affordable-but-equally-entertaining) NY Liberty.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: Russia’s ‘Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks,’ with Sean Wiswesser
Sean Wiswesser, author of the new book, “Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin’s Secret War,” and a former senior operations officer with the CIA, joins Lawfare’s Justin Sherman to discuss the major Russian security organs and their training, characteristics of Russian “sticks-and-bricks” surveillance and counter-surveillance tradecraft, and the Russians’ use of coercion, kompromat, and sex (often dubbed “sexpionage”) to recruit and pressure people. They also discuss corruption in the Russian intelligence services, illegals and assassination programs, brazenness and sloppiness in Russian operations, and the future of the Russian intelligence threat to the United States and the West.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: Investigating the Investigators: Sophia Yan on Journalism in the PRC
Senior Editor Michael Feinberg sits down with Sophia Yan, a senior foreign correspondent with The Telegraph, to discuss her time reporting on the Chinese government, and how it leveraged its security services to investigate her in turn. Sophia recently wrote in-depth about this experience in “The secret Chinese surveillance programme tracking people like me,” in The Telegraph.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: How the World Sees Trump’s America with Eve Fairbanks and Madeleine Schwartz
On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sits down with Eve Fairbanks, a writer and journalist based in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Madeleine Schwartz, founder and editor-in-chief of The Dial, a magazine of international writing, to discuss The Dial’s forthcoming book, “How We See it: The World Looks at America in the Age of Trump” (out June 9 from The New Press). They speak about several essays in the collection, which is made up of contributions by journalists from around the world who probe their home countries’ complex relationships with the United States—relationships made even more complex under the current administration. They also dive deep on Fairbanks’s essay on the South African perspective.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, May 22
In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, and Roger Parloff discussed the Department of Justice’s newly-announced “Anti-Weaponization Fund” which purports to “hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare,” oral argument in Anthropic v. U.S. Department of War before the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and more.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Archive: Why Public Health is Critical to National Security
From April 2, 2025: Atul Gawande is a surgeon and a public health expert. He's also the former head of global health at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), an agency that the Trump administration has prioritized for dismantling since its first day in office. On today's episode, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett sat down with Gawande to discuss what USAID does, the consequences of destroying it, and why public health is so important to U.S. national security.Editor's Note: This episode was recorded on March 27, 2025. The following day, the Trump administration announced that USAID would be dissolved by the end of this fiscal year. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Archive: Former Deputy Chief of the Justice Department's Capitol Siege Section Alexis Loeb on President Trump's Pardons
From January 23, 2025: Alexis Loeb, the former Deputy Chief of the Capitol Siege Section of the Department of Justice, sits down with Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff to talk about President Trump's blanket pardons and commutations for everyone her unit prosecuted. She discusses how she became involved with the cases; how they were handled by prosecutors, judges, and juries; a couple of cases she personally prosecuted; and her views on the impact of Trump's pardon proclamation.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: Trump Sues Self, Settles
This week, the Department of Justice announced that Trump and his sons dropped their lawsuit against the IRS and Treasury in exchange for a $1.776 billion fund for Trump’s allies and blanket immunity from government suits for the Trump family.Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes talks with Senior Editor Eric Columbus about what the settlement means, where it came from, and what can be done about it. You can read much more in the piece Eric co-authored with Senior Editor Anna Bower in Lawfare here.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Rational Security: The “No Banner is Safe” Edition
This week, Scott sat down with co-host emeritus Benjamin Wittes and Brookings Senior Fellow Kari Heerman to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including:“With Friends Like Xi.” This past week, top U.S. officials and business CEOs traveled with President Trump to Beijing for his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The summit had a warm air to it, with Trump going so far as to call Xi his “friend,” a far cry from his hawkish stance toward China during the campaign and his prior administration. But Trump left having made relatively few concrete deals on the host of issues dividing the U.S. and China. Did Trump miss an opportunity here? Or is the seeming thaw in relations a positive sign for future cooperation?“Dirty Dancing: Havana Fights.” Cuba ran out of oil last week, but the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against the island nation 90 miles off the coast of Florida has only intensified. On Monday, the U.S. announced new sanctions on three Cuban government agencies and 11 top officials amidst reports that the Department of Justice may seek an indictment against Raúl Castro, the 94-year-old brother of Fidel Castro and former president of Cuba. And surveillance flights over the island nation have reportedly increased in advance of an expected military build-up in coming weeks. How seriously should we take Trump’s threats to pursue regime change in yet another country after Iran and Venezuela? And how long can Cuba hang on with its economic situation becoming more dire?“I’ve Got 122 Problems, and a Tariff is One.” On May 7, the U.S. Court of International Trade struck down yet another round of Trump tariffs—this time, the across-the-board 10% Section 122 tariffs that President Trump had imposed after the Supreme Court invalidated the earlier tariffs he’d issued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Specifically, the Court of International Trade ruled that the administration cannot meet the statutory requirements for using Section 122, though its ruling has since been stayed by the Federal Circuit pending appeal. Is this decision likely to stick? With another legal defeat, what options does the administration have left to follow through on Trump’s trade policy?In object lessons, Ben appeases the AI overlords with a glowing review of his latest experiments with Claude. Scott appeases his inner middle-aged man with a reprised recommendation of A Man on the Inside. And Kari fears that Americans are far from appeasing friends and allies in other democratic countries.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: Ancient China and Modern Politics
Senior Editor Michael Feinberg sits down with Daniel Bell, a professor at the University of Hong Kong, who recently wrote, “Why Ancient Chinese Political Thought Matters: Four Dialogues on China’s Past, Present, and Future.” They discuss the ongoing influence of ancient Chinese political theory on the contemporary policies of the PRC and its domestic debates.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: ‘The Warhead’ with Jeffery Stern
Loren Voss, Senior Editor at Lawfare, sits down with Jeffrey Stern to discuss his new book "The Warhead: The Quest to Build the Perfect Weapon in the Age of Modern Warfare."They talk about the development of the Paveway bomb and the importance of precision weapons to modern warfare. Stern grapples with their complicated effects on warfare, both adding precision to warfare that can reduce civilian casualties but also distancing the human element from killing, allowing force to be used more frequently. They discuss the impact of limited war on implementation of the War Powers Resolution and congressional oversight, and the necessity of understanding that weapons are just one part of a complicated kill chain. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: The Costs (and Cultural Cachet) of the Cambridge Spies
Senior Editor Michael Feinberg sits down with Antonia Senior, whose new book on the history of the Cambridge spy ring, “Stalin's Apostles: The Cambridge Five and the Making of the Soviet Empire,” comes out in the United States at end of this month. They talk about the history of the spy ring, how they were recruited, how they were unmasked, and their lasting effect on the culture of espionage.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: The Trials of the Trump Administration, May 15
In a live conversation on YouTube, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Eric Columbus, and Roger Parloff to discuss Judge Boulee denying Fulton County’s motion for the return of the 2020 election ballots seized by the FBI, a judge ordering the National Endowment for Humanities to rescind DOGE-backed cancellation of grants, oral argument in Mark Kelly v. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and more.You can find information on legal challenges to Trump administration actions here. And check out Lawfare’s new homepage on the litigation, new Bluesky account, and new WITOAD merch.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Archive: How China Might Coerce Taiwan
From May 15, 2025: For today's episode, Lawfare Foreign Policy Editor Daniel Byman talked with Evan Braden Montgomery and Toshi Yoshihara, both Senior Fellows at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, to discuss their recent Lawfare article, "Beijing's Changing Invasion Calculus: How China Might Put Taiwan in its Crosshairs." Together they discuss how China might use a blockade, subversion, and nuclear threats to intimidate Taiwan, the United States, and key regional states like Japan. They also discuss how Taipei and Washington might change their approach to reduce the risk of Taiwanese coercion.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Archive: A Very Special Grand Jury Report
From January 10, 2023: District Attorney of Fulton County Fani Willis has completed her special grand jury investigation of election tampering in 2020. The special purpose grand jury has completed its report and has been dissolved, and the supervising judge yesterday scheduled a hearing for January 24 to decide whether to make the report public. What will happen next? Will there be indictments? Are they going to wait until after the report comes out, or should we expect them imminently? Should we expect a Trump indictment coming next?To go over it all, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare contributor Anna Bower, Georgia State University Law Professor Anthony Michael Kreis, and Tamar Hallerman of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and co-host of the podcast Breakdown, which has followed the special grand jury from the beginning. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lawfare Daily: Corruption, Coverups, and Crisis in Domestic Ukrainian Politics
Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Danylo Mokryk, a war crimes investigator at the Kyiv Independent and the author of a YouTube blog about domestic Ukrainian Politics, to talk about the latest corruption saga engulfing the Ukrainian government—and why, despite so many arrows pointing toward Zelensky personally, no one is calling for his removal.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.